The internet can be a nasty place. With so much negativity and trolling on social media, kindness and empathy are the need of the hour. Instagram recently launched a social initiative --Unlabel India, which focuses on nurturing a safe and supportive community online. They have partnered with Yuvaa, a youth media and insights company, to inspire conversations among youth all across India and initiate positive online dialogue.
Instagram’s mission is to bring people closer to people and the things they love and that’s only possible when they feel safe online. Speaking about the same, Tara Bedi, Public Policy and Community Outreach Manager, Instagram, says that the social media platform is a place for safe self-expression and the safety and well-being of their community is their top priority. “With Unlabel India, we will lead a countrywide conversation with students to spark a movement of kindness, empathy and respect, that is core to our platform and hopefully percolates to the entire community,” she says.
She adds, “Together with our partner in the initiative Yuvaa, we will approach this in a phased manner. The first phase will be a roadshow to 50 colleges in 20 cities. Yuvaa will create safe spaces at these places where young Indians will be encouraged to speak up on issues such as mental health, bullying, and gender sensitivity. The next phase will drive sustained engagement with the colleges through ‘kindness clubs’, ‘kindness ambassadors’ and targeted digital campaigns. We aim to reach half a million people via these online and offline engagements by the end of the year.”
Bedi says that this initiative for 2020 was built over the success of the ‘Unlabel’ content series that was released in 2019 by Instagram and Yuvaa. That was a series of five videos that showcased youth speaking freely about issues they’ve faced, without passing any judgement. This year, the Unlabel India initiative carries forward the same objective, but in the form of a scaled programme that aims to positively impact the well-being of India’s Instagram community.They will travel to places like Guwahati, Chandigarh, Chennai and others.
Instagram is working on many such initiatives including mental health, hiding likes and safer internet. In India, 80 million people use Instagram, the second largest after USA. Bedi says that today 50 per cent of the people in India are under the age of 25 and it’s this percentage that will be responsible for India becoming the world’s largest youth workforce in 2020. Internet safety becomes even more important in this context, as it is a big binding factor for this population, be it in urban or rural areas, and whether they speak English, Hindi or Marathi.
Bedi believes that while Unlabel India will initiate a series of important conversations around challenges young people are confronting today, the underlying message is that of safety, respect and empathy. “We are excited to find opportunities to enable such dialogue both online and offline because it is a collective responsibility to ensure we equip ourselves with the tools to navigate difficult situations in both realms. Our hope with this initiative is that we promote healthy and responsible use of our platform, but also understand how some of the issues young people face manifest and build those learnings into our products,” she adds.
The photo and video-sharing social networking service has partnered with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, to pursue opportunities to build digital literacy to keep more women and children safe, by raising awareness about online privacy, safety and security. “We’ve launched features like ‘Restrict’ to prevent unwanted interactions. We also have programmes like the Counter Speech Fellowship, in partnership with the Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC), to have meaningful conversations with teens on issues that are important to them, like bullying, diversity, mental well-being, body positivity, gender equality and sustainability,” Bedi shares.
Pune is known as the education and IT hub. How forthcoming were the youngsters in city to the initiative? “The roadshow is led by Yuvaa and Nikhil Taneja, the co-founder and CEO of Yuvaa, led the conversation with over 800 students in Pune across Symbiosis School of Media & Communication, Symbiosis School of Sports Sciences, International School of Business and Media, as well as Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Lavale. The college visits were concluded with an open-mic-evening. Two themes that stood out from our conversation with students in Pune were friendship and parenting. Earlier friendship was all about fun, and that continues to exist. But now there’s an additional depth to the friendship with the kind of gratitude students attribute to their friends for accepting them without judgement. There was also a growing empathy towards parents, which we witnessed in opinions across schools,” Bedi says.