By Cosmas Omegoh
There are growing concerns following children and youths’ current excessive indulgence in communication gadgets and use of the Internet.
Parents who have observed this trend are sorely worried that it is gravely causing harm to the young ones in many ways, and are, therefore, calling for action.
No doubt, the entry of GSM into Nigeria is everything revolutionary. Since 1998 when the first set of telecommunications companies rolled out in the country with their products and services, Nigerians have witnessed quantum leap in telephony.
About 26 years down the road, it has been an explosion of all sorts in the way Nigerians communicate. Nothing of such was ever experienced in the days and years before.
However, many have observed that the spread in the use of GSM has brought with it, a flurry of vices.
For instance, an expansion in the use of GSM has witnessed the planting of millions of hand-held devices in the hands of kids and young adults.
Parents in a bid to stay connected to their children and wards procure assorted devices to help them stay in touch. Most parents go ahead to maintain constant subscription of the Internet connectivity and data for their children and wards. That has ensured that minors and young adults gained unfettered access to the worldwide web (www), thereby exposing them to the millions of dangers. And so, every now and then, minors are seen busy with their devices – phoning, chatting, texting, exchanging videos and surfing the web.
It is becoming an addiction to some of them, some parents have expressed worries.
In the light of the forgoing, some concerned adults have been shouting themselves hoarse about the worsening trend, expressing worries that the development is absolutely unhealthy. Some parents are also saying that what is being experienced now portends telling consequences for healthy social upbringing of the younger ones.
“There is no doubt that the entry of GSM brought interesting times to the country.
“Clearly, Nigerians now communicate much better than before. Recall the days of NITEL when the use of telephone was a luxury. Now, it is no Ionger so! Every Tom, Dick and Harry now has an active line.
“But this current development has also brought in its wake a wave of ills especially to the children. That is abundantly reshaping their everyday life.
“These days – especially now that they are on holiday – when the children are not watching the television, they are on the phones, or hooked to one device or the other.
“To some of them especially the older ones, many parents will agree with me that they are tending towards addiction to phones,” Ben Uwague, an Internet communication activist, told our correspondent.
Parents speak on trend
A parent, Mr Oladayo Ajayi, who lives in Lagos admitted that his 18-year-old son, who recently completed his school certificate examination now manifests signs of gadget addiction, a development, he said, was becoming worrisome.
“When he was in JSS 3 and was going to school from home, I handed him an old cell phone I used way back and got a sim for him. I wanted him to stay in touch home to ensure that we could connect with him in case of anything untoward.
“But I got to know that I made a big mistake when a teacher reported to me that he was always engaged with his phone sometimes even in class while lessons were going on. At some point, he connected with a few others who also brought phones to school; that I also got to know and had to withdraw the cell phone from him.
“But going forward, I also noticed his interest in playing with his mother’s phone any time he had an opportunity to do that, despite repeated warnings.
“But four years after, it now became necessary to get him a cell phone and a line to enable him fully register for the recently concluded school certificate examination. He wrote the examination as an external candidate; we wanted him to use the line to receive updates.
“Since then, I had once again noticed his growing obsession and long use of the gadget. It now appears he can’t do without it. Some nights, he stays late with the phone; I hear sounds suggest he watches a certain game with the phone. I have had barge into him room on a few occasions to seize the phone and warned him to submit it before going to bed. Oftentimes, he was not happy I did that.
“The moment, power is resorted to the home, I always see his eagerness to charge his phone; often times, he goes to the neighbours to do that,” he said.
Similarly, Mrs Mary Ihekoronye, a trader, admitted her son’s attachment to his phone was becoming worrisome.
“He is always asking for money to buy data and airtime. He doesn’t mind to transferring data from my own phone. He tells you ‘Mummy surf me!’ That I understand is their language.
“He tells you he has to do his assignments with the phone hence his need for data. But I doubt if what he is doing is all about his assignments.
“Anytime, there is no power supply for him to charge his phone, his eagerness to latch unto mine amazes me. No amount of scolding him stops him from doing so sometime later. Anytime, he sees someone else’s device, he always gets excited; he wants a feel of it,” she said.
Activists warn parents
But some activists have been expressing concerns over the way kids of nowadays are getting sold to devices and the Internet, warning parents to step up their monitoring else their children will get their lives messed up.
In a recent video, an unidentified mother warned parents to ramp up monitoring their kids because addiction to phones and the Internet is already herding many of them to harms’ way.
The lady lamented that trouble had arrived now as no child is no longer innocent once they taste phones and the Internet especially at school. To her, parents must up their ante.
“The ugly things kids do with gadgets these days include playing various video games. Those games expose them to all manner of things including sites that are not healthy for their moral growth. Some of those sites expose them to drugs, alcohol use and, pornography.
“When they finished accessing the said sites, they sneak their phones to school and recruit their friends to join them. Through that, the ones you earlier presumed innocent learn masturbation,” she said.
She added that the cell phones kids carry nowadays, help them to graduate to yahoo yahoo.
She is unhappy that kids download assorted music of some of their musical idols into their phones to listen and learn bad lyrics of songs played by their acclaimed music idols.
She expressed sadness against how the Internet is taking the young ones to Facebook, and some other social media handles where they watch misbehaving adults, women wearing bum shorts and some going nude.
Saddened by her feelings she asked: “How do you handle it when you now discover that your girl or boy child has become addicted to masturbation or betting or gambling?”
She maintained that the gadgets parents now hand to their children to make them happy and trendy are in turn destroying them.
She called on parents to rise up and stand together to fight the new elephant in the house before it destroys the society.
Lastly, she called for firmness, and more authoritative handling of today’s kids, reminding parents not to be soft in dealing with them any more as none of them is bigger than their parents.
While also expressing his opinion on the trend, the National Vice Chairman, Parents Teachers Association of Nigeria, Chief Adeolu Ogubanjo, described it as “very, very worrisome.”
He said: “Very unfortunately, all efforts to control this by ensuring that some apps are not available to children nowadays have continued to prove abortive.
“We are quite aware that we will have to give gadgets to the children anyway; they will always use them.
“But unfortunately, whatever apps you put there to check them, they will always bypass because they know these things much more than we their parents do.
“Even if you limit them access to certain sites, they will always call on their colleagues who will help them bypass whatever you have programmed there and then restore it as if nothing has happened.”
Chief Adeolu described the current challenge as “one form of decadence we have to deal with right now.
“It is cyber decadence. It is just like cyber security/crime among adults.
“I believe that there should be a national discourse on this. We are concerned because the children and youths are the future of any nation.
“But sadly, I don’t have a solution to this yet. But all I can say now is that sometime before the end of the year, we should be able to have a national summit on cyber decadence and how to control it among our youths.”
He disclose that at the summit, parents and experts would be brainstorming on how to ensure that there was “some kind of controlled phones so that no matter what they do, maybe the phone will be encrypted so that they don’t go beyond some apps. We will look at the challenge together and holistically because it is messing up our children.
“The problem is a cankerworm that is growing. I don’t know what to do now other than to call for a national summit on gadget use and the decadence now associated with it.”