Is the ever advancing technology responsible for the spike in crime among the young, or is it lazy parenting? You! takes a look...
opinion
Is the ever advancing technology responsible for the spike in crime among the young, or is it lazy parenting? You! takes a look...
Like every one, sisters Aleena and Alveena probably dreamed of becoming famous. Both sisters did get fame but for all the wrong reasons.
The 16-year-old Aleena was brutally murdered by her older sister Alveena for allegedly blackmailing her. Alveena along with her fiance Mazhar had slit her throat and then made it look like a robbery gone wrong. For more effect, she inflicted wounds on her upper arm and head.
Fortunately, she was unable to fool the investigators and five days later she and her fiance were arrested, along with Ahsan and Abbas - Aleena’s two friends and co-blackmailers.
Alveena confessed to murdering her sister with the help of her fiance Mazhar and later of staging a robbery. Her sister Aleena had, according to Alveena, been blackmailing her along with her two friends Ahsan and Abbas, with whom she had relationships. Aleena had acquired indecent images of Alveena and was using them to force the latter to be used by her friends.
Alveena told the media that she had pleaded to her sister and her friends to delete these images but they refused and threatened to upload them on social media. Alveena also claimed that she told her mother but had only been beaten by her. So she was forced to commit such a heinous crime.
Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Korangi, Nauman Siddiqui, blamed this gruesome murder on the misuse of smartphones and technology, adding that parents should refrain from giving their children such devices. Or at least monitor their children’s activities. He stressed that these girls owned expensive phones despite the family’s low income.
Many people agree with the SSP, stating that technology - like smartphones and internet - is responsible for the spike in crime among the young. This could be one of the reasons, but there are surely many other factors as well. But one can’t deny the fact that gruesome crimes have been committed in the past when there was no technology.
Asma Nawab, known for the triple murder of her family in the 1990s, didn’t have any internet or smartphones but she not only helped murder her own family, but facilitated this crime by drugging them the night before. This young student had not only abetted in her family’s murder but she had gone on her daily routine the next morning - sitting for an exam without depicting any signs of anxiety. It had been reported that she had been calm during her exam hours. She had sought neighbours to open the main gate of her house, after she claimed she had not received any reply from her house.
Murder is a crime that has been committed forever, and will continue. Technology can only facilitate a murder. It is just like saying guns are dangerous. But guns are only dangerous when people use or misuse them. Similarly, technology can be misused but not be the cause of a crime.
Parents need to change their parenting style with changing times. If their children are ‘different’ from children of other ages - and they probably are - their children’s upbringing is their responsibility and no one else’s.
With the breakdown of the social set up and family system things have changed. Now families usually have two earning partners with no support from extended families to look after children while both parents work.
Children are forced to or coaxed by their own parents to become dependent on devices for one reason or another. But this is lazy parenting which sets the basis for a gap between the parents and children. With no real-time interaction between them, there are chances that the personality of the child will be quite alien for the parents.
As in the case of Alveena and Aleena, one can easily see several negative traits in their personalities like selfishness and disregard for each other. Alveena took the extreme step of murdering her sister by slitting her throat - revealing some severe criminal traits in her personality that didn’t allow her to empathise.
There was obviously something extremely wrong with these two girls - technology was the least of their problems. Their parents naturally missed all the red flags that could have helped their daughters in time. There must have been other times when the girls exhibited extreme and violent behaviour, frustrations, anger and jealousy and even hate which went ignored. Mainly because numerous times parents from the lower strata of the society don’t pay a lot of attention to their children, especially daughters.
A parent’s basic responsibility is good upbringing of children and they should be the first to recognise if their child exhibits any extraordinary traits at any stage of their lives. If parents pay a little more attention to their children, maybe certain extreme incidents can be avoided in the future.
