Smartphones And Social Media Could Be Dangerous For Children

Hello dear friends. How did your weekend go? For me, it was full of activities especially in preparation for the children's Day Celebration in our church. Anyways, we are back to work now and all that is in the past now. This week's first topic ( smart phone for children) is one sensitive discussion that must be looked at from both the professional and experience angles.

Smartphones no doubt came with a lot of advantages to people of all ages but the abuses in usage is recently outweighing the merits of the gadget. The United Nations defined a child as every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier. Thus, a child is not defined by society but by nature. No matter how big an individual appears, they are still children if they have not clocked eighteen.

Tima Miroshnichenko

Let's begin by saying that as Africans, we have some model for bringing up children. One of such models is that the children have to live within the scope that the family can provide at any given time. As such, a child does not have the freedom to call the shots while he or she is still under their parents.

As far as children are concerned, I feel that they have to be groomed properly before exposing them to our dangerous world. Our world is like a keg of gunpowder waiting to explode. Through smartphones, the children would have easy access to social media where there is a lot of dangerous content. This is the reason I advocate for only adults who are mature enough to make decisions on life matters be allowed to have access to smartphones or even have social media accounts.

All social media platforms consider the age of their customers before an account opening procedure can continue. Hence, indicating that social media or smartphones is not for children.

There are a million and one reasons why children should never be allowed to possess smartphones or even have social media accounts. Let's see some of the consequences.

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Inappropriate Contents

Most social-media platforms do not screen their contents and as such, to gain attention which they get paid for, bloggers publish content that has nudity, alcohol consumption, drug usage, gangsters and whatnot. This is quite worrisome and could be affiliated with the high rate of social vices in our society today. When children are exposed to inappropriate content, it tends to reflect in the general life of the society. Before now, you'd bear with me that there wasn't any case of lesbianism or homosexuality in our post-primary school, but now, that's the order of the day.

Drop In Academic Performance

Many children today are rather engrossed with social.media through their smartphones than studying. This is why there is a general downward slope in academic performance of nowadays children than it was before the advent of smartphones and social media. The recent WAEC result can attest to this. A lot of students, more than 70% of registered students failed either Mathematics or English Language both. What we have now is how some schools even collect charges to be able to give answers to learners in the examination hall to aid them pass. On the other hand, the government is aiding students too by removing corporal punishment from school but would ask school authorities that they must make sure that students pass an examination they did not prepare for.

Sleeping Disturbances

Most children who have smartphones now engage in excessive usage. Some of them would come to school only to sleep whereas, they have been up all night either chatting, playing games or even watching naughty skits online.

Sharing Private Information or Contents

There have been many cases of children who exchange nude images that were released to the public which led to the other party committing suicide. Children can toll this line because they are not informed about the dangers of sharing such data with people they meet on the internet.

Cyberbullying

When a child is at the risk of other users of social-media, then he would be blackmailed or bullied on the internet especially when secret information has been leaked. This is why smartphones or social media should be used by adults so that they can use their discretion to ward off such habits tailored against them.

Having said the above, children may be allowed access to computer systems where they can learn the use of gadgets. The computer system should also be regulated to give access to social media or adult contents.