Seto Mulyadi, widely known as Kak Seto, plays with child flood victims at SD 01 elementary school in Ketang Baru in Manado, North Sulawesi in Januari, 2014
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The recent case of a teenager who posted melancholic messages on her Facebook page before taking her own life shows that as children develop, some become susceptible to depression and then tend to turn to social media, a prominent children's rights activist said on Friday.
Seto Mulyadi, better known as Kak Seto, said on Friday that Indonesia's education system focused too much on academic assessment, neglecting the need for children to develop their abilities to accept failure and overcome frustration.
As a result, Seto added, many children were susceptible to feelings of depression, as they could not properly channel their feelings to other people and instead chose to pour out their emotions through a one-way form of communication.
'This shows that frustrations and failures felt by children are easily transferred to social media,' Seto told thejakartapost.com.
According to Seto, children's tendency to channel negative emotions through social media was a result of ineffective communication within their communities, in which children believed their families were too busy to listen to them and that their schools failed to appreciate their identity.
'Social media makes them alienated as they develop an inability to channel their emotions through real conversation,' said Seto.
Ideally, Seto said, family should be the buffer zone that prevented children from letting their negative feelings get out of control.
Seto said that parents should position themselves as friends to their own children, using a friendly approach and assuring children that they would listen, instead of giving commands or acting in a superior way, which could make children felt more alienated and uncared for.
'Parents are the place for them to share stories, the safest place for them to run,' Seto said.
Meanwhile, the family and friends of 16-year-old Mayang Ariesti were shocked on Monday to find that the teen had committed suicide, after writing suspicions about her boyfriend being unfaithful in her last Facebook post.
Mayang also left a suicide note addressed to her family and friends, where she apologized for taking her own life. She was found dead in her room at 5:30 a.m. on Monday. (bbn)
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