Growing up, the phone I had was far from being smart "You can say unsmart" If there is any phone like that, cause this particular phone that was gifted to me by my big sister wasn't bearing the name Smart "How did I know that" well, I do because the phone can't access the internet, so what I was busy doing with it "was just receiving calls from my siblings" what a usage.
Using that kind of unsmart phone didn't make my parents worry much about me cause I wasn't seeing anything that would corrupt me in any form " Like Social media" So when I finally got to sixteen years of age then my mum surprised me with my very first smartphone "Yeah!! You heard right".
In the world today, I see children of less than ten years using a smartphone and accessing the internet. I know a child whenever he holds his mum's phone, goes straight to YouTube to look for his kind of videos "children's videos" Most times, I would just look at him and shake my head "like wow" cause when I was his age I didn't know what youtube was hehe!!!.
We don't have the power to control what the owners of a platform publish on social media but what we do have the power to control is "what our kids consume" and that brings the role of the parents into play.
Social media has become a place, where people post all sorts of things without putting the little ones into consideration, they feel it is the parent's responsibility to filter what their children consume on the internet. These platform owners have just one major goal and that is to attract followers to their page and in return get rewarded for creating content.
Platform owners publish what they deem is right for their audience, and these audiences in question are selective, before anyone publishes something on the internet, the first thing they consider is their target audience. Often children aren't part of the targeted audience " except its children content".
"Let's say" I owned a platform where I talk about relationship-related issues, Before deciding to do this on my platform, I've already targeted my audience which is "the married, and the intending to wed" the kinds of languages I'd be using in my shows won't be appropriate for children, and because it won't be suitable for children doesn't mean I should censor it.
Who is responsible?
Parents or platform owners The Internet has become one of the most important technological tools, the internet was originally a place of entertainment and education, it's a medium where people can express themselves freely and share opinions. Currently, the usage of the internet is vast to the point that people have started sharing inappropriate content that isn't suitable for children's consumption "Sometimes even adults".
children have become more exposed to the Internet. It's the responsibility of the parents to see that their children make use of digital gadgets like smartphones " which aren't bad" and still grant them access to the internet, now after all this, the parents must monitor and secure what their children watch on the internet and educate them.
The thing about children is that "they love to learn new things" and they are fascinated when they come across certain things, they haven't known before, so they are easily able to obtain inappropriate materials from the internet.
The responsibility lies in the hands of the parents to control what their kids consume. Parents are responsible for guiding their children and molding them into the kind of person they want them to be and censorship is one of them, I know parents are always busy with work and often create less time to monitor the kind of sites their children access on the internet".
In cases like this, parents should install software applications that would grant them access to their children's smartphones and place certain restrictions on the sites they visit in their absence.
Thanks for reading🌹