Digitalisation, a great boon

With the advent of technology by the day, the tech-savvy kids are hooked to gadgets and exploring a whole new spectrum in the virtual world. Children quintessentially lap up the art of storytelling and are one of the largest consumers of media.

With rapid digitalisation it raises a pivotal question ‘Is digitalisation redefining the story telling formats and consumption for kids’? Not surprisingly, this was the general consensus at the Open Forum on Tuesday.

The panel generally agreed that digitalisation is a great boon for imparting education to the young denizens, however, if not supervised the risk of addiction to technology is a possibility.

The speakers included Shirenik Rao, documentary and animation filmmaker; Deepak Jain, festival director, Dubai Children's International Film Festival; Ram Krishna Veerapaneni, Mango Mass Media; M Veda Kumar, eminent educationist and Ramesh Tekwani, corporate filmmaker.

Ashish S Kulkarni, CEO, Reliance Animation, moderated the discussion. The panelist also said that the digitisation is also changing the formats of consuming media. Children have small attention span, so with that the content is becoming shorter. A 5-minute video attracts more eye balls than a lengthy one.

“Children need to be visual literates. The storytelling formats are changing, however, the techniques will be same. Cinema is derived from theatre plays and similarly with digitalisation, it is evolving more,” Veda Kumar said.

The internet had made the world a global village and digitalisation has democratised the content. “When a grandmother tells a story to child, the kid has his own imagination and he gives a different aspect to the grandparent. And taking a step further digitalisation makes it more possible to say their story in their own way. Today’s children are already in age of digitisation and kids don’t see as we do. Digitisation gives real power to education and with it comes responsibility to disseminate it properly. We are in the age of innovation,” Ramesh Tekwani said.