Ruchi Chabra
Centuries ago, Plato cautioned against drama that corrupts the soul. Freud spoke of catharsis through art. But in today’s world, content no longer heals, educates, or uplifts. It seduces. It distracts. It distorts. Filters replace reflection. Virality replaces virtue. The result? A generation more attuned to reels than to reality, more loyal to screens than to values.
We are witnessing a quiet crisis. From OTT platforms and YouTube to online gaming and AI-generated deepfakes, our young citizens are growing up in an unregulated ocean of influence – often addictive, occasionally criminal, and almost always value-neutral. In Udaipur, a man brutally murdered a woman and burned her body – later confessing he was inspired by Drishyam and Crime Patrol. In Delhi, teenage boys formed a gang called Badnaam, imitating gangster portrayals from Pushpa and Bhaukaal, and stabbed a rival – all to shoot a reel. In Karnataka, six men printed fake currency after copying Shahid Kapoor’s character in Farzi. In Maharashtra, a 17-year-old almost died performing a reel-themed suicide stunt gone wrong.
These aren’t isolated anomalies. They are symptoms of a deeper cultural descent – where fiction is no longer watched passively but enacted tragically. The screen, once a window into imagined worlds, has become a mirror scripting reality.
And it starts early. Cartoons like Shinchan, Doraemon, Motu Patlu, and Oggy and the Cockroaches model disobedience, mockery, and shortcut culture – rarely kindness, seldom hard work. In parallel, online games like PUBG, Free Fire, and GTA V normalize violence, deceit, and virtual crime. Most come with unsupervised chats that serve as breeding grounds for bullying, grooming, and dares with real-world consequences.
To this already volatile mix, a new element has been added: the illusion of easy money. Fantasy gaming apps like Dream11, WinZO, MPL, and Zupee promote gambling, disguised as “skill-based gaming.” For many teenagers, the dream is no longer to learn, create, or serve – but to earn by playing, scrolling, and chasing likes.
And now, the most insidious threat: AI misuse.
In Delhi, a schoolgirl attempted suicide after a deepfake obscene video – created using AI – went viral. In another case, a family lost ?9 lakh after receiving an AI-generated voice call mimicking their son. With voice cloning, face swapping, and synthetic media becoming alarmingly accessible through apps like ElevenLabs, Midjourney, DeepFaceLab, and Pika Labs, impersonation and fraud have entered a new era. These are not futuristic fears – they are real, present, and rapidly growing.
AI, when unregulated, becomes a tool of deception, exploitation, and psychological harm. With no ethical guardrails, it is now being used to generate misinformation, manipulate emotions, and distort identities – especially in young, impressionable minds. The lines between trend and truth, fact and fantasy, are dangerously blurred. We are raising children not by moral compass or community, but by algorithm – watch-time, clickbait, and views.Algorithms chase engagement, not ethics. Children as young as ten can access mature content with zero checks. The Indian Censor Board continues to monitor only theatrical releases, while the real battlefield is elsewhere – OTT content, YouTube, gaming apps, cartoon channels, and now AI content. But it is not merely a call for censorship, it is also a call for accountability.
To protect the moral and mental fabric of the next generation, we do not lack laws. We lack cohesion, vision, and urgency.India already possesses a foundational legal framework to regulate digital content and behaviour-through the IT Act, IT Rules (2021), Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. All of these provide fragments of a framework whichneed to be integrated into a comprehensive national response to digital toxicity and AI misuse. We need a dedicated national IT task force – proactive, anticipatory, and rooted in child safety – to formulate and enforce policies that are attuned to the digital realities of our time. Digital platforms like OTT, YouTube, immersive gaming, AI-generated content, and gambling disguised as skill-based gaming must be held accountable through algorithm audits and transparency mandates – not just for what they show, but for how they shape minds.Age-verification protocols, mandatory content classification, and watermarking of synthetic media must become non-negotiable. Media literacy, AI ethics, and digital behaviour must be taught in schools as core life skills, not as optional add-ons.
This is not about silencing technology or throttling creativity. It is about shaping a humane digital culture that places conscience above clicks, and citizenship above consumption.
We may already be late. But if we delay further, we risk more than just the innocence of our children. We risk the moral architecture of our society. Let us not raise a generation fluent in trends but unfamiliar with truth. Let us not outsource parenting, education, and moral reasoning to the algorithm. Let us reclaim stories from screens, and values from code. Because if we do not act now, the most dangerous fiction of all may be that we had control – and chose not to use it.
(The Author is an educationist, school leader, and advocate for media ethics and inclusive learning)