If you’re a woman on the internet, you’re familiar with being a recipient of trolling and bullying, or seeing it happen to someone around you. And more often than not, celebrities face online abuse on a near-daily basis. Dealing with hate or uncalled-for criticism is not easy, even if you’re a bona fide celebrity. In order to bring awareness to this issue, on Gandhi Jayanti, 20-year-old Ananya Panday launched Swachh Social Media. The campaign urges her followers to pledge to not use abusive language on social media with the intent to hurt someone.
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This isn’t the first time the young star has used her platform for a good cause. Swachh Social Media is part of her digital social responsibility initiative, So Positive Earlier, which she introduced earlier this year. So Positive promotes awareness regarding social media bullying, and the inspiration for it came from her personal experiences online—Panday received tons of unwarranted criticism and abusive comments when debuted with Student Of The Year 2 in May this year.
“My reason to start So Positive and #SwachhSocialMedia campaign was inspired by what Mahatma Gandhi had said, ‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world’. I feel like if one person makes a change then everyone follows and if you want to see a change in the world, you should start it,” Panday tells IANS.
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So Positive provides support to people facing similar struggles with its So+ Handbook, available online. It provides extensive information regarding cyber bullying, the harmful impact it may have on one’s mindset and ways of reporting the same to appropriate authorities.
Panday is currently filming for Pati, Patni Aur Woh, alongside Kartik Aaryan and Bhumi Pednekar.
