'Social Media Has Advantages, But Exposes To Toxicity': GenZ Icon To NDTV

Age is not a political qualification, and the difficulty of a youth-focused government is that it is judged in real-time, Nepal's media and youth icons told NDTV on Thursday.

Speaking at "NDTV Anviksha: Ideas Across Borders", Charu Chadha, Editor, Media 9, praised Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah.

"I see youth not as a political qualification, but I also don't see age as a political qualification. We have a young government in place, led by a prime minister who is a structural engineer, a rapper, was the mayor, and now holds the position of Prime Minister of this country," she said, adding that it indicates that Nepal has aspiration.

However, she flagged the difficulties the GenZ government, saying that the leaders are being judged in real-time.

"Our generation had the privilege of having press conferences and you know, news coming filtered to us, but here they are being judged in real time," Chadha said.

Agreeing to her, Cricket Association of Nepal Secretary Paras Khadka said that even cricketers are judged on social media.

"When we were growing up as a young cricket team people had no expectations of what a cricket team or a national cricket team in this country could do. Today, there's more pressure on cricketers. Because every match that they play is on TV," he said.

The former cricketer said that in the age of social media, everyone knows how you are performing.

"When you score runs, everybody talks about it. But imagine you go through a string of five zeros, all of a sudden the world will be against you," he said.

However, he highlighted that social media had played a crucial role for Nepal Cricket to be popular.

Speaking on the issue of getting judged on social media, supermodel and influencer Aastha Pokharel highlighted the problem of body shaming.

"Social media has its advantages, but it's also, it exposes you a lot to toxic things. It makes you really vulnerable. In today's day and age, especially when there's so much hate out there, and you can just hide behind an anonymous name and just say whatever you want to and like not think about the consequences," she said.