The social life: Help rather than uploading

Video cameras on cell phones stop people from stepping into situations to help. Photo/Thinkstock

This week a video that shows a child on a bus attempting to help a nearly unconscious woman believed to be her mother, has led to an official police investigation in the US city of Philadelphia.

It had 400,000 views before it was flagged up to the police.

"While it is helpful that so many people emailed and called us after viewing the video, there were many people on the bus who witnessed this as it was occurring and took no action at all," said Anne Marie Ambrose of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services.

"Child abuse is a community problem, if you see or know that a child is being abused or neglected, you should report it immediately."

The same is true of the Hamilton boy. Since when was it acceptable to be voyeurs of such social ills and not act on them?

Police at the time said they were are appalled adults supplied a young boy with alcohol and even more concerned he was re-victimised when footage of his antics was posted on YouTube.

The video was posted in January. Police had already seen to the boy after receiving several calls from concerned members of the public. The person shooting the video can be heard saying "what are you doing ?" before getting the reply "he's drinking G, he's allowed".

In the video, the person recording the incident says "he's like eight you dumb b****, he could die" before the boy tries to ride off on his scooter.

Police said while there was no culpability on the part of the man who posted the footage, he pleaded with him to remove it from YouTube, as the footage violated the privacy of the young, vulnerable boy.

Video cameras on cellphones and the capability of uploading the next moment to whatever social media site you choose has made such voyeurism commonplace - protests, fights, drunkenness, everything that has moral boundaries.

What has happened to commonsense and stepping in to help? Are we too hungry for the thrill of being first to post something online and sit back and watch the consequences?