EDITOR — Social media is all about communicating with each other, sharing ideas, educating each other informally, lightening the everyday burdens by sharing jokes as well as reaching out to others in times of need.
However, social media platforms like WhatsApp, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and TikTok, among others, have ceased to serve their intended purpose. They have been turned into platforms of spreading malice, hatred, foul language, gossip and rumours calculated to shock, sensationalise as well as cause alarm and despondency.
With the advent of citizen journalism, all caution and journalistic ethics have been thrown out of the window. Dubious online news publications have sprung up all over, touting unfounded rumours and gossip as credible news.
The harm caused to the gullible public is unprecedented. The multiplier effect of such dangerous news is enough to pose a security threat to the country.
That being said, the uncensored information glut on these platforms is threatening to create a lost generation of our impressionable youths who know no better.
These children who are in their transformative years lap up this uncensored deluge of information and pass it on as gospel truth.
Granted our children have to move with the times — they have to go on internet to carry out school research. Because most educational institutions demand and encourage the use of these gadgets in schools and at home, parents have gone out of their way to provide these. However, out of ignorance or busy daily grind of providing for the families, these same parents rarely monitor what their children watch or read on the internet.
We just may live to regret the advent of modern technology if we as parents, educational institutions and the nation at large do not take steps to address this situation.
Our so-called celebrities and media influencers who are supposed to be role models seem to have drunk from the same poisoned chalice. Instead of positively shaping societal thinking, they seek fame for all the wrong reasons.
These people are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law, cousins, nephews as well as nieces who go on social media to diss each other, spew vitriol and pose naked without giving a thought to what the world thinks of them or what harm they inflict on society. The philosophy of hunhu/ubuntu is lost on them — hence the directionless lost generation.
This has to stop!
Wenyatoro,
Rusape.
