By Timeswatch
Lagos – Nigeria :
Following her recent appearance on Jordan Radio 105.5 FM with Opsy Mama the presenter, to treat the theme : “Parenting in the New Age of Social Media : Raising Connected, Resilient , and Responsible Children in a Digital World”; renowned legal and media practitioner, Comrade Abiodun Kolawole raised the alarm over the imminent doom that may infiltrate families, societies in our contemporary times, to degrade normal social fabrics and destroy what should sustain appreciable cultural values. She declared as follow:
” Our parenting must move from policing to coaching. Parents cannot raise children who are only good at phones; we must raise children who are good at life, with roots to know where they come from, wings to fly in any world, and values to know right from wrong, even when nobody is watching”.
According to the eloquent legal pedagogue , the danger has changed! Before now, we feared children getting lost in the streets; now, we fear children getting lost in their phones, right inside our own homes. She affirmed that banning does not work because we can not monitor what we do not understand, just as we cannot give what we don’t have, pointing that our job is to teach our children how to swim without drowning.
In her words:
” The phone is like a knife, a good servant, and a bad master. Those days the village raised a child , but nowadays the phone raises a child.
” Our job as parents is not to stop the river from flowing but to teach children to swim and to be safety conscious at all times. The solution is not fear or total freedom, but ensure guided freedom – what I call the ‘4-S Formula’: Structure, Supervision without spying, Skills, and Safe Space”.
Expatiating further, she stressed that a child who ignorantly fears punishment more than danger will protect and prefer
danger: That a child who knows home as a safe place to confess will run home first, not to a predators on the screen or streets.
Kolawole who is also known as Mama Gani Fawehinmi due to her penchant for activism continued, ” Our job beyond the screen is to make home sweeter than the internet. ” Children’s brains are like wet cement – anything that steps on it now leaves permanent marks.
” The digital landscape has fundamentally altered parenting. Social media is both a classroom and a crime scene. ” While it offers learning and livelihood, it also exposes our children to cyber bullying, blackmail, and Cybercrimes, grooming / sextortion, kidnapping, Yahoo recruitment, bad influences, and addiction.
” Under the Cybercrimes Act 2015, as amended, cyberbullying is punishable by up to 3 years imprisonment, yet many cases go unreported”.
Urging parents on commitment and deeper consciousness, Kolawole conscientised ;
” We cannot parent with fear, seizing phones violently and shaming children, as that would only create secretive children with fake accounts. Neither can we parent with careless freedom nor fear.
” The approach to new age parenting that Nigerian children need today is beyond the screen. The solution is for parents to be connected, resilient, and responsible. These are pillars of safe parenting now.
” Children need Connected Hearts: present, not absent, or mere presents. ” We should dedicate our time, attention, love, and care for our children at least 15 minutes of undivided attention daily.
” You don’t need to be ” TECH EXPERT”, you just need to dedicate.
” A 30 – minute gist without a phone can save the child from “PREDATOR ” who gives 3 hours attention online.
” We are calling on government both at the Federal and states levels with compassionate appeal to expand the community youths group, more playgrounds, compound football, youths centres, libraries, rather than betting shops at all nooks and crannies.
” 30 – minute walk without phones and no using of phones on dining tables are healthy recommendations capable of restoring the vanishing values”.
She asserted the need to raise Children with resilient minds and capacity for critical thinking to question what they see online, and emotional intelligence to name their feelings, pointing that there is need to build a child’s inner strength to know that not everything online is true; that Instagram life is a packaging.
Also Comrade Kolawole advised the need to teach the children to Block, Report and Say no to wrong proposals; and that nothing is shameful about reporting wrong things to parents.
” We should express genuine love to our children , a child who is loved at home will not seek validation from strangers online.
” Children need Responsible Hands: Community protection is our African culture. It takes village to raise a child, and that village must now be digital.
” We call on the schools, churches, mosques, and street associations to teach digital safety and encourage safe pace and sane environment.
” Our purpose or goal is to raise children with values, service, and purpose beyond likes and followers.
” Children can be online and still be SAFE, SANE, AND SENSIBLE.
” Your children must be free to tell you everything without fear. ” Privacy is protection. Teach them never to share full names, schools, locations, nude pictures, addresses, and phone numbers.
” We must be able to control them because too much screen time kills resilience.
” Parents must lead by example, you cannot be on TIKTOK for 10 hours and tell children to read books. It is pertinent to conclude that faith, values, respect, contentment, commitment, dedication, and hard work in this new age return to family.
” Social media can not teach that , ONLY family can. “As a media and legal practitioner, consultant to NGOS, the vulnerable and children defender, we have provisions in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, Child rights Act and child rights laws of the repsective states , that government has duty to protect children.
” But under our culture, family and community have first duty.
” Let’s uphold the spirit of CORRECTION, not CONDEMNATION. “We must not fail our children; they are big projects and pride of the future to be successful parents in this new age – we must be conscious and guided”, Comrade Kolawole ended.
