Page 314 - EW September 2024

Teacher-2-Teacher

Reclaiming mind share

of India’s youth

YOGI KOCHHAR

HE COUNTRY’S POLITICIANS AND LEADERS, Social and emotional learning is being
especially of the ruling party in Delhi proclaim In-
dia’s demographic dividend — the world’s largest removed from the human psyche as
Tpopulation of children and youth estimated at 500 minds are being colonised by social
million — from the roof tops and every available national
and international platform. But encashing this dividend media. Minds worldwide are being
is conditional upon this huge mass of young people being consumed in short 2-3 second bursts
well-educated, innovative and productive. Are our edu-
cationists — policy formulators, professors and teachers
aware of this? Let’s peel the rhetoric. teachers and siblings.
The stark reality is that India with population that’s 4x of As a result social and emotional learning doesn’t just
US has a GDP 15 percent of the US. It has to rattle a thinking suffer, it is systematically being removed from the human
mind as to how with hands and minds that are 4x of the US, psyche as minds are colonised by new social media.
we produce a GDP 1/8th the US . The checksum is simple: The purpose of education was to train young learners
In India, we have lost our minds semantically and literally, to acquire knowledge and apply it. Now with the advent of
and are continuing to lose them. AI, traditional learning and teaching will be eclipsed and
Following the advent of social media platforms — Face- replaced making the entire process of personal teaching-
book, Instagram,, Tik-Tok, Snapchat, and a host of other learning redundant. The invasion of AI and VR is moving
apps — an apocalypse in the form of AI (artificial intelli- us deeper into a rabbit hole.
gence) is here and with the impact of a tsunami, is about to The objective of this essay is to provoke a progressive
erode all traditional ways of ‘knowing and doing’ educa- debate on the impact of social media on people and young
tion. An urgent response is required. people in particular. The truth is that our minds are being
How did this happen? What’s to be done? To chart a consumed in short bursts of 2-3 seconds during six hours
response – a course of action — we first have to understand spent daily on social media, leaving little time for creation
the causes of our present predicament. and innovation.
Over a decade and a half ago, I was member of a cohort of he western world is already researching BANI (brittle,
best American tech companies engaged in deep discussion Tanxious, non-linear and incomprehensible) minds. Ear-
with eminent psychologists from Yale University. The top lier this year Mark Zuckerberg, the proprietor of Facebook,
item on the agenda was how to increase the market share Instagram and several other mind share consuming apps
of participating companies. As the sun was setting and the was arraigned before the US Congress and accused of hav-
sundowners were rolled out, a new paradigm emerged. A ing “blood on his hands”. Facebook is being sued by 40 state
far more durable and profitable alternative to increasing governments in the US. What’s being done to protect and
market share, is to increase the mind share of customers. reclaim the minds and mind shares of the world’s largest
The mobile phone was identified as the tool kit to conquer child and youth population in India?
minds worldwide. With a market cap of $1 trillion con- One response is an online programme on happiness and
tributed by 25 billion users worldwide, every user is worth mind mechanics designed by the Yol Foundation (yol.one)
$400 to Facebook. and approved by AICTE (All India Council of Technical
As schools conveniently turn a Nelson’s eye, students Education) as an essential course for all technical higher
are spending an average of six hours daily scrolling, pas- education institutes countrywide. This app trains the user
sively viewing videos, short reels and posts on Facebook to retrieve and calibrate the mind on the same phone that
and other social media apps, and keep flipping using the erodes and hijacks it.
neuroplastic channels of the mind. This is further broken Equally effective for middle and secondary schools as
up in slices or neural synapses of 2-3 seconds per view. project work, the app takes a gamified approach to reward
Even for institutions that don’t permit phones on campus, users with tokens for engaging with important life priori-
the moment students leave their campuses they get hooked ties. It maintains a score card on 27 parameters in real time
to their mobile phones. and enables users to re-calibrate their minds hijacked by
With minds engaged in neural switching every 2-3 social media into a state of balance. The app is a category
seconds, IQ (intelligence quotient) is reduced to pattern creator whose efficacy has been acknowledged by Prof.
recognition and EQ (emotional quotient) is replaced by Phoebe Koundouri, global head of climate change at the
emoticons. The use of filters to touch up pictures and cre- United Nations (“carbon in the climate is a reflection of
ate ‘selfies’ ushers in a sense of self-denial leading to trust carbon in the mind”).
issues between ‘I’ and ‘myself’ making the mind dense, cul- (Yogi Kochhar is the Dharamshala-based former Director of Microsoft
minating in trust issues between the person, peers, family, India and currently founder of YOL Happiness Foundation)

314 EDUCATIONWORLD SEPTEMBER 2024