There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Does this sound like a message - accompanying a picture of a resplendent sunrise, of course - received from an uncle twice removed on WhatsApp? It just might have been, for these words are of the bard of Avon, a particular favourite of Indians when it comes to greeting their dear and near - and not so near - ones on social media. The dividends of such sage advice can only be fulfilling, for the phone hard disk that is. This deluge of sun-dappled flowers, plump toddlers in a variety of headgear, birds and so on along with cheery messages causes one in three smartphone users in India to run out of space on their devices daily. Research by the tech-giant, Google, shows that millions of Indians who are going online for the first time like nothing better than sending greetings from their phones. Even the prime minister, his several pressing assignments notwithstanding, finds time to wish his colleagues each morning. He also epitomizes every other Indian parent who takes offence at his or her child's stoic silence upon receiving such salutations.

The urge to flood the phones of friends and strangers alike may have perplexed the all-knowing Google, but its triggers are not too difficult to trace. The sudden profusion of smartphones has brought online a generation that did not grow up with the internet. They reached the age of smartphones without any knowledge of the concept of spam - large amounts of unnecessary data that causes systems to crash. But the problem - if a barrage of well-meaning messages can be seen as such - stems from something much deeper than technological ignorance. For people born and brought up in the joint family system, applications like WhatsApp, the main culprit when it comes to good morning messages, are a godsend. It allows them to reach out to, keep in touch with and poke their noses into the business of large groups of family and friends. At the same time, WhatsApp affords a sense of privacy - gossip in India must always remain within the family, give or take a few dozen neighbours - that social media like Facebook do not. Now here is something that the debate on data privacy surrounding WhatsApp, among other apps, does not take into consideration. A caring neighbour chancing upon a young couple canoodling and sending a message - or worse, photographic evidence - in a WhatsApp group which includes the said couple's parents surely cannot be seen to be intruding on anyone's privacy.

There are, however, things more dangerous than garish graphics and innocuous neighbours in this new-age neighbourhood. Hoaxes and misinformation circulated on WhatsApp have precipitated a fake-news crisis. People have lost their lives on the basis of doctored pictures and rumours. The older generation is accustomed to trusting the media. The pitfalls of new media, where faking news has been turned into a profitable industry, are unknown to them. However, the intent behind forwarding calamitous, albeit false, news is not necessarily bad. It is more often concern for the safety of a loved one. Indeed there is nothing good or bad, but the way in which something is used that makes it so.