Monitor children online

Technology has its fair share in the education life of children but is also a big contributor to the ills that bedevil the society.

Crimes are planned and executed through digital gadgets and teenage pregnancy is on the rise thanks to the technological arena.

What begins with a ‘friend request’ on a social media platform morphs into illicit intimacy and the result is mortifying.

The internet is awash with children chatting, playing games or uploading photos and video. But the medium begets the dreaded cyberbullying, blamed for many cases of suicide globally.

A 2018 Internet Society report, “Safe Online, Safe OnLand”, laid bare the danger children are exposed to on the web.

There are many apps on the internet which are a click of a button away which children can download and use without their parents’ knowledge.

Cases of depression

Apps such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp can be turned into weapons of mass destruction for children, who can be victimised, bullied and exposed to vulgar content. Children are lured to pornography and paedophiles.

Ironically, despite the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, which is meant to counter vices such as cyberterrorism, cyberbullying and fake news, many children have fallen prey to cybercriminals.

Cases of depression, and even death, as a result of online abuse abound. In 2009, Open Witsell, 13, reportedly committed suicide after her boyfriend shared a photo of her breast that she sent to him.

Parents are well-placed to monitor the media content their children consume and offer appropriate advice.

But it is often difficult for parents to track the more tech-savvy children’s browsing history. 

Parents should sit down the children and talk them out of bad content; tell them the bad effects. Forge a face-to-face communication and robust relationship with our children — one that inculcates honesty, openness, love and trust so that they don’t pull back when faced with a media problem.