Photo: net
The last week of January, the internet was awash with Western media stories covering the appearance of Big Tech CEOs before the Congressional Committee.
Dressed formally, the CEOs of the big four social companies were in to listen to the heaps of accusations and to recite their well-crafted punch lines to Senators and the invited journalists assuring us that their engineers are doing all they can to make our interaction and connection safer and responsible.
This time some new ingredients were added to the hearing sessions, as for the first time came into contact with victims of their companies’ business model and Zuckerberg said sorry to tormented mothers, fathers, uncles, aunties, brothers, and sisters holding photos of their loved ones lost to cyberbullying and sexual exploitation enabled by their built computer algorithms.
Yes, this may not sound alarming to you but with over 2 billion people actively using Facebook and close to 70 percent of almost 2 billion Tiktok-users below 30 years of age, with no sign of a change in the business model of these social tech companies, you are a stakeholder in any conversation on the regulation of these institutions.
The major reason is several research and media stories have repeatedly revealed that pedophiles are now finding it easy to connect, recruit, and harm vulnerable young people.
Last year on 07th June 2023, the Wall Street Journal published a story with findings of an investigation done by researchers from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst that laid bare that pedophiles are using Instagram to connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage sex content.
And early this year on 31st January 2024, the New Mexico attorney in his lawsuit against META a company managing Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and lately Thread described it as the largest marketplace for predators and pedophiles globally. With rapists and other sex offenders not confined to America or any Western country, the lack of local statistics does mean that our children are smarter or not being exposed.
Today the effects go beyond sexual exploitation to mental health problems because these platforms have been also constantly blamed for being responsible for the increase in mental health disorders among young people.
In 2022, The NewTimes published a story revealing a fourfold increase in depression cases recorded by the Ndera Neuro-Psychiatric Teaching Hospital. According to the publication, in the first six months, the hospital saw the numbers jump from 1,743 reported in 2021 to 7,817 cases. More worrying is that 20 percent of the received patients were children below 19 years.
Although some of the causes of depression are not new, Doctor Bizoza Rutakayile, a senior consultant in Psychiatry singled out the increase in the use of social media as one of the major contributors adding that excessive use of the platforms leads to self-isolation, which makes one lose their social connection eventually.
Additionally last year, the Reuters Institute Report ranked our neighbor Kenya as the global leader in TikTok use prompting the company execs to comment on plans to establish a special subscription model for Kenyan Content. This shows the influence and power social media is having in winning the hearts of GenZ and NextGen.
With 1GB now costing as low as Rwf 100 coupled with ever-increasing access to end-user devices specifically smartphones, this is the time to start thinking about how to protect our young generation from becoming slaves of small screens and victims of adversaries of the dark net before it’s too late. Because with all measures addiction to small screens might soon become the new drug.