People are talking about —

—- the eight young Pakistanis, including three girls, who are among the inspirational people who bagged the prestigious Diana Award - considered the ‘highest accolade’ a young person can achieve for social action or humanitarian efforts - and how gratifying it is to read about their work and how they proved to be catalysts for change in their communities. People say the stories of talented persons should be highlighted so that other youngsters are inspired and our negative image can be negated.

—- the ‘no more, do more’ speech given by the PM in the national assembly and how for once both the government and opposition appeared to be on the same page as far as the welfare of the country is concerned. People say it was a good example of how political parties need to listen to each other’s point of view and work for the betterment of the country instead of exchanging barbs and bad mouthing each other which is the norm these days.

—- the tax on mobile phone calls longer than five minutes and how it has been appreciated by many - excluding telecom companies - who are seriously concerned about how much time is wasted on chit chat, especially during office hours . People say the mobile phone has now become a part of our lives as all official as well as other work depends on the registration of the number being used, but unfortunately its misuse is also rampant especially by the younger generation.

—- Pakistan’s inclusion in the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) list by the United States, and the baseless assertions made against the country in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. People say this move has obviously been taken to try and pressurise the country because there are no child soldiers in the armed forces, which is a visible force, so how is it that those who compiled the report noticed them or was it a figment of their imagination?

—- the study published by researchers, which has pointed out that social media networks can eventually be a threat to human civilisation, while giving the example about the misinformation regarding the current pandemic that has prevented the widespread acceptance of masks and vaccines. People say we must heed the warning that we may see unintended consequences of new technologies that contribute to phenomena such as ‘adulteration of elections, diseases, violent extremism, hunger, racism and war.’

—- the quarterly transparency report by the social media platform Tik Tok, which stated that during the three-month period from January till March 2021, 62 million videos were removed globally. In the Pakistani market, TikTok removed 6,495,992 videos making it the second market to get most videos removed after the USA, where 8,540,088 videos were removed during this period. People say this addiction with silly and irrelevant content is mindboggling and wonder what the world is coming to. — I.H.