Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Not a toy

I was thinking of taking psychology in college in 1970 after we saw a movie in India. The name of the movie was  "Khilona" meaning "Toy". The theme was kind of unrealistic in the sense that a doctor suggests that a young man needs a life partner to treat  flashbacks of his dying girl friend. My parents talked me out of taking psychology because I had come quite far with Economics as my major and was almost done with my education. Later on in life I learned different aspects of human mind through experiences of people around me. A very young coworker of mine saved her teenage brother-in-law from attempted suicide and became his sister/best friend, just by listening to him and giving support that he could not get from his own parents. I have always listened to people who need to talk and vent so they don't feel alone. I always wonder what makes people sad and how I can help.

I am in New York and it is very expensive to travel abroad to understand different groups of people and to figure out how many of them are actually sad and suffering from loneliness. All I know is that a lot of people in America are lonely and sad. We always hear the words "mentally unstable"as part of news when it comes to school shootings or even random killings. So does it make sense to play around with the minds of young and old people alike by experimenting on social media network and manipulating human emotions? Do the people involved realize that there are some people whose PTSD and or Anxiety/Depression can be effected by these experiments and manipulations? Will the people involved be accountable or responsible if even one human being loses his or her life as a result of this experiment? Experiments and studies are done in controlled environments with supervision by professionals and with the consent of the participants. They should not be done as a ploy to increase visits on social media sites.