There seems to a consensus of all stakeholders in the lives of our precious children that excessive exposure of our precious children have almost irreparable negative impact on their general well-being and mental health.

One of the major areas where there seems to be no concensus is HOW to rescue of children from the lion’s den of excessive consumption of social media contents.

I think adressing the almighty question of HOW-TO begins with defining what is excessive according to age and other social factors. At what point does the exposure of our precious children to social media contents become self-abuse or permitted/encouraged abuse?

The second issue is whether to go the route of prevention or camp our effforts around response(early or later, short term or long term).

Our general disposition as informed stakeholders of close to 3 decades is that prevention is better than cure. Contents are the moulders of values and once values are formed, conducts proceed thereof and it is often irreversible.

The route of the schools in this video clip seems to be response. The schools spend a lot of tax payers’ funds on many interventions aimed at addressing the impact of exposure of their students to the social media platforms. They want the social media companies to take over the bill.

What do you think about the position of the schools?

Do we need to look at how we can marry prevention to the mix?

Does Africa have anything to learn from the realities on ground?

RN 15042023