Sitharaman : Need to keep social media toxic-free to build intelligent country

Bengaluru: Nirmala Sitharaman, Defence Minister, stressed on the need to keep social media “toxic-free” to build an intelligent and smart narrative for the country for fast progress.

“We should be the discoverer to make social media toxic-free. It should be an forum were people can interact with each other, but without bitterness, negativity, toxicity”’ she said it while addressing the sixth Social Media Conclave, Organised by an NGO  Namaste India.

Sitharaman disagreed with the term “warriors” or “yoddhas” for those  propagating government programmes on social media platforms and she also said that she will prefer to call them as architects as they improved the ambience and beautified the surroundings.

She said, “Architects do wonderful things to make our ambience, ecosystem better. As architects of the social media, we should bring more culture in the wonderful, technology-based, interaction fora-whether it is Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook.”

“We communicate better by bringing in lot of facts because we get the reality in picture, in words. All of us are here for a common cause as we want a better India. We all have the same exposure to how civic lives can be better in rural or urban India”.

The Defence Minister acknowledged that there was a need for the country to move fast and in this context, said there should be an intelligent and smart narrative on the social media platforms, instead of “toxic discussions”.

“I understand that this country requires to move fast. We want our country to become smart and intelligent. We do not want the social media to have a toxicity flow.”, she concluded.