IMPACT OF SOCIAL NETWORKING TO THE JUVENILE DELINGUENCY

Social Media may either act as a bane or a boon for society and individuals. However,
sometimes its cost outweighs its benefits, especially for juveniles. The access to electronic
gadgets for long durations has opened floodgates of opportunities for juveniles to get
inspired from the content on social media and express themselves in ways that may
constitute crimes on social networking sites or in the real world. These issues become crucial
subjects of discussion especially in times of a pandemic that has behoved the parents to
provide their children with electronic devices and secure internet connection to enable
hassle-free education.

Social Media – A Source of Inspiration for Juvenile Offenders

Exposure to criminal acts may “trigger” crime and aggression, or it may influence the style
of doing the crime. In the state of Punjab, A 16-year-old boy bludgeons his grandmother to
death after getting inspiration from the TV crime serials. In 2014, the two teen girls, inspired
by a meme “Slenderman”, stabbed their friend nineteen times. There have been instances
where similar kinds of crimes were committed in the past by juveniles. Many experimental
studies indicate that social media exposure is significantly related to antisocial behaviour in
children.

Juveniles’ violent behaviour can be characterized by observational learning or modelling

which primarily means that an individual may acquire ways of doing something by watching
others. Media violence may influence children more strongly because they are open to
learning and, exposure can lead to the long-term effects i.e., developing a positive attitude
towards violent behaviour.

Aggressive social media may also result in a contagion effect. In contagion effect or copycat
effect, Juveniles tend to mimic the aggressive activity portrayed in the media, video games,
and television programs, etc. Examining the juvenile offenders involved in school shootings
suggested that fascination with firearms, bombs, and explosives was a common theme. In
April 1999, 13 persons were murdered at Columbine High School in Colorado and both teen
perpetrators were fascinated by violent video games, especially the video game Doom that
had even been adopted by Marine Corps in 1998 to train their soldiers. Violent video games
train children as to how to use the weapons and harden them emotionally to the act of
murder, resulting in violent acts.

The juveniles, who got inspired by TV serials or by social media to commit crimes can be
punished or rehabilitate under the relevant provisions of law. The question arises that
whether the violent social media, through which juveniles got inspired, can be held
accountable for the crimes committed? For instance, in India, the Ministry of Electronics &
Information technology issued an advisory that Blue Whale Game is abetment to
suicide under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code as it encouraged suicide among children.
Here, there was a direct incitement to commit suicide but this does not hold true for most of
the portrayals of illicit acts on social media which unintentionally lead people to engage in
criminal activity. We have to look at plausible solutions to stop the long-term effects of
exposure to media violence.
The very radical idea, that strikes a common man, is to ban such content. However, it has
two pitfalls. First, censorship goes against the freedom of speech, which is a fundamental
right under the Indian constitution, and second, completely banning social media will
deprive us of the benefits of it as first and foremost it acts as a tool of awareness. Further, it
may be difficult to get rid of such content because it is humanly impossible to identify what
may instigate the young minds to commit crimes. For instance, research suggests that violent
shows that have the most deleterious effects on children are not always the ones that adults
perceive as most violent. There is still a possibility of a detrimental effect on adolescents
even if the content that is commonly perceived to be a cause of juvenile delinquency is
banned.

Thus, it becomes crystal clear that banning violent content may not bring required changes.
However, if we look at the other way round, it is apparent that juveniles can acquire criminal
behavior through observational learning but, the sustainability of that behavior depends on
its reinforcement. Rotter’s expectancy theory states that a person’s performance depends on
the expectation that behaving in a particular way will lead to a given outcome. Application
of this theory to Criminal law suggests that people engage in unlawful conduct because they
expect to gain something from it in the form of status, power, money, etc. If the person
actually attains any of these from his unlawful conduct, then it may result in high
expectancies which in turn will lead to reinforcement. On the other hand, low expectancies
mean a person believes that his behavior will not result in reinforcement. The purpose here is
to break the sustainability of criminal behavior by reducing the juvenile’s potential
expectancy of gain. It may come from the outside environment or from within itself over
time. However, these theories need to be applied practically to ensure that exposure to social
media does not lead to criminal behavior in Juveniles in the long term.
Social Media – A Dais for Juvenile Delinquency
Social Media has become an inextricable part of the lives of adolescents in today’s world.
Such internet-based applications not only inspire them to commit crimes but also provide
tempting avenues to the youth to perpetrate crimes on various social media platforms.

There are several factors that have contributed towards social media platforms becoming a
veritable bedlam of juvenile delinquency. The cited statistics show that adolescents spend
considerable time on social networking sites and there is no doubt that this duration has got
only enhanced with all the children locked up in their houses due to the pandemic. Presently,
nuclear families form the highest percentage of households in India and therefore, the
children are naturally inclined to feel isolated and they end up killing hours on social media
for entertainment, chatting with their friends, sharing content, etc. Many a time, parents are
simply unaware of what their kids are doing in their rooms and a wide communication gap
may exist between the parents and their children. Taking into consideration the above-listed
factors and how emotionally vulnerable adolescents are, social networking sites come in
handy to these youngsters to vent out their pent-up sadness, anger, and frustration in the form
of unconscionable crimes.

Teens sharing nudes, indulging in sexting that is sharing or posting sexually suggestive
images, and sharing other pornographic content have become commonplace. In May 2020, a
private chat group, “Bois Locker Room” hit the headlines when an Instagram user leaked
chats from the group where members were found sharing objectionable pictures of underage
girls, objectifying them, and planning “gang rapes”. This was a harrowing incident of Cyber
Pornography on a social media platform popular among youngsters. The Information
Technology Act, 2000 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860 contains provisions providing
protection against this act and in addition to this, the POSCO (Amendment) Act, 2019 has
defined child pornography and enhanced the punishment for its possession and distribution.
As harmless as they may seem, social media challenges have proved to lure vulnerable
juveniles into life-threatening situations. For instance, the Momo Challenge, an internet hoax
through which children were being enticed to perform a series of self-harming acts including
suicide, and the Kiki Challenge under which the participant has to step out of a moving car,
perform the dance and jump back into the car while it is moving, that led to a series of
casualties in various cities of India.

Cyberbullying is another devil that we have to not only protect our juveniles from but also
prevent them from perpetrating it. Due to the relative anonymity of the online environment,
teenagers find cyberbullying as a safer alternative to bullying in-person and innumerable
reasons, ranging from settling personal grudges to deriving pleasure from tormenting others,
may be responsible for such tendencies among adolescents. Body-shaming or mocking a
person’s physical appearance is a conventional form of bullying especially on social media
websites on which teenagers spend hours scrolling through pictures of a variety of models.
Such an act not only has harrowing psychological and emotional effects on the victim but
also reeks of a petty mentality among children at a very tender age.

Apart from this, Digital piracy, which refers to the illegal act of downloading or sharing a
digital work without the permission of the copyright holder, has emerged as a rather
common online offence committed by juveniles. In 2015, the anti-piracy wing of Kerala
police arrested three youngsters for uploading a copy of a Malayalam movie on the net. Lack
of knowledge about illegality and consequences of indulging in digital piracy, normalisation
of piracy among teens, lack of money to procure content legally, and the unchecked
environment provided by the social media platforms to freely share pirated files are some of
the reasons that explain the ubiquitous nature of this cybercrime.

One of the most judicious solutions can be educating the youth about the legal status of the
various crimes mentioned above because unawareness about the consequences of their
untoward acts on social media is one of the prime reasons behind juveniles committing such
crimes blatantly. At this age, parents play an indispensable role in the life of an adolescent.
Parents should not only keep a regular watch on the online activities of their children but
also provide emotional support to help them cope up with the vagaries of teenage.
Educational institutes should strive towards creating a safe environment for adolescents to
express themselves and aid normalization of gender differences and variability in physical
appearances. Curiosity is a characteristic of adolescence but society has to satiate it through
education and encourage the youth to employ it towards self-improvement and to become
better individuals.
Conclusion
It can be rightly concluded that the free flow of ideas and easily accessible content on social
media platforms may instigate adolescents to engage themselves in crimes in the real world.
In addition to this, a number of factors and instances cited above prove that social
networking sites act as platforms for adolescents to commit various illegal acts. This may
jeopardize the future of our youth and put them behind bars at an age when they grow and
develop into valuable assets for our nation. It is the need of the hour that we understand the
intolerable future consequences of exposure to social media content and protect the
adolescents from falling into this dangerous zone.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION THEORY

Juvenile delinquency is one of the most complicated topics in criminal justice and sociology.
There are researchers from different fields that have been trying to discover the significant
reason for the issue; if it’s sociological, physical or psychological. This paper examines the
influence of deviant parent and peer groups of teenagers between 12 - 17 years. Proposed
here is a study to explore if there is a strong correlation between being delinquent and
interaction with deviant parent and peer groups.
The principles of differential association theory are:
1) Delinquent behavior is learned.
2) Learning is by product of interaction. Thus delinquency cannot occur without the aid of
others; it is a function of socialization.
3) Learning occurs within intimate groups.
4) Criminal techniques are learned.
5) Perception of legal code influence and drives. The reaction to social rules and law is not
uniform across society, and children constantly come into contact with others who maintain
different views on the utility of obeying the legal code. Some kids, they admire may openly
disdain or flout the law or ignore its substance. Kids experience what Sutherland called
“culture conflict” when they are exposed to different and opposing attitudes toward what is
right and wrong or moral and immoral. The conflict of social attitude and cultural norms is
the basis for the concept of differential association.
6) The differential association may vary in duration, frequency, priority, and intensity.
Whether a person learns to obey the law or to disregard it is influenced by the quality of
social interaction. Those of lasting duration have greater influence than those that are brief.
Similarly, frequent contacts have greater effect than rare and haphazard contacts. Sutherland
did not specify what he meant by priority, but Cressey and others have interpreted the term
to mean the age of children when they first encounter definitions of criminality.
he study will identify if the parents have a great role to help reduce juvenile delinquency.

Sutherland (1883-1988) is a sociologist who collaborated with the Chicago School of Sociology and
founded the Theory of Social Integration [8]. This theory is based on the symbology of interaction and
emphasizes the role that social interaction plays in shaping human behavior and attitudes [8,10]. Criminal
behavior is learned through communication and association with criminal patterns that are accessible and
acceptable and encouraged in the individual’s environment (physical and social environment) [9].
Sutherland says people are diverted to the extent that they participate in environments where the ideas,
stimuli and techniques of crime are acceptable to the environment, for example, they learn how to get, use,
or steal illicit drugs and then sell theft objects

The more people contact people with such environments earlier (age), repeat calls often more often (social
abundance), closer and deeper connections (deeper socialization) and the duration of these socializations is
longer (the duration of socialization) similarly, the likelihood that they will ultimately become a delinquent
is more. The problem is not just in imitation; deviant behavior is not only learned but also taught. Therefore,
this theory focuses on what is being learned (including specific techniques and techniques for committing a
crime) and from whom it is learned [8]. Sutherland claimed that, through socialization processes, some
people are more susceptible to crime than others; these individuals have internalized a crime-orientation
approach that gains from groups that have been closely associated with them. This group may be a family or
a childhood group, an adult friend group, or neighbors that are effective in socializing. There are also
subcultures in which you can learn how to commit crimes and encourage behaviors that are contrary to
current behaviors in society. The more family members are healthy and more intimate, the less distortion
possible [10]. Regardless of a man’s family, the problem of delinquency is far less problematic than an
irregular family. Normative support is stronger here, with fewer opportunities to learn and learn deviations.
A stable community and group of neighbors are likely to have a lower percentage of crime than an unstable
community.