Malini Murmu, 22, a student of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bengaluru, recently committed suicide when her boyfriend publicly announced their break-up on Facebook. While her act did not solve the problem, the Facebook update certainly pushed her over the edge.
Everyone you can possibly think of is on Facebook. The application has a “relationship status” that has proven to be quite a misused option with a lot of people using it to wash their dirty linen in public.
The dignity of privacy is violated every day by people who do not understand that a dispute is always between two people. The other person may want it resolved privately, not on a public platform.
Saket Kashyap, an employee with Hero Honda, says, “People are exposing their private life on a public platform. Anyone who is paranoid about something takes their problems to the social networking site. And many take this stuff too seriously.” Malini’s case may be a very rare instance where her boyfriend’s new single status drove her to suicide, however, posting her break-up with her boyfriend on the platform may have aggravated the issue.
Arguably, she took her life because she was dumped and not because her ex went public. The update was posted on Sunday and she hanged herself a whole week later. Daniel Divya Kumar, chief geek at theindiangeek.com says, “Just because it was on FB the suicide news is being sensationalised. Facebook is a reflection of what happens in real life. Even minus the update the pain is the same.”
The controversial relationship status has always grabbed eyeballs. Shefali Nagdev, social media expert says, “Earlier, no one used to know if you are in a relationship or not, but now, if you wish to ask a person out, you do your background check by checking their relationship status on Facebook first.”
Technology has its pros and cons. When something happens you can’t go around telling people, ‘hey this happened to me’, but Facebook gives you the means to do that. Few people enjoy expressing political, philosophical and geographical views and sometimes irrelevant trivial matters, while others talk about deeply personal issues. Savita Menon, a psychologist, says, “After a break-up, you expect a certain period of mourning perhaps for a few weeks, or months. In the case of a divorce, you usually need a bigger gap to cope with the problem, but this boy did it immediately after the break-up, which might have hurt more. Social media sites have become akin to a street market where you are showcasing yourself to the world and this incident shows discretion and privacy is the last thing on a lot of people’s mind.”