We all know the fable of the boy who cried wolf, how a shepherd’s repeated false alarms led to a village ignoring his cries when the danger happened for real. The moral is simple: false warnings erode trust. Today, that ancient lesson is resurfacing in a modern, more dangerous form – through the rampant circulation of unverified abduction and kidnapping reports on social media.
Nagaland, in recent weeks, has seen a troubling trend of such unconfirmed posts being shared widely across platforms, often accompanied by sensational captions. In Mokokchung, a town known for its rumor mills, ‘child kidnappers’ has been the talk of the town for some weeks now. These viral alerts, rarely verified, are feeding a culture of fear, distrust, and eventually, what psychologists call panic fatigue.
Panic fatigue is a condition where repeated exposure to emotionally alarming but often false information exhausts people’s mental and emotional capacity to respond. Over time, the public either stops reacting to genuine emergencies or becomes constantly anxious, both outcomes deeply harmful to a healthy society. Communities become more suspicious of outsiders, parents live in constant worry, and police are flooded with leads that lead nowhere.
What’s lacking is not concern, but media literacy. Most people forwarding these messages do so with good intentions, unaware that they may be spreading misinformation. In the absence of basic digital literacy, knowing how to verify sources, cross-check facts, and question emotional bait, social media becomes less a tool for awareness and more a weapon of confusion.
We need a cultural shift. Schools must introduce digital literacy early. Churches and civil society groups should actively raise awareness on the dangers of misinformation. District administrations must work with media houses and community leaders to debunk fake reports swiftly and transparently. And most importantly, every user must learn the value of a pause before pressing “forward.”
The lesson from the fable is clear: trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild. If we keep crying wolf on our timelines, we risk not being heard when a real danger does appear. In safeguarding our children, communities, and collective sanity, responsible information sharing is a duty and media literacy a must.
