LET US JOIN HANDS FOR THE SAKE OF A SAFER INTERNET

 

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Edited version of public domain image via Pixabay

By The Citizen Reporter

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Tomorrow, February 8, is Safer Internet Day (SID), formally marked on the second day of the second week of February each year. The theme for this year’s observation –

the 19th edition in the SID series since it was initiated by the EU Safe Borders Project in 2004 – is “Together for a Better Internet”. This is an invitation for all stakeholders – including especially parents, teachers, policy makers, regulators, etc. – “to initiate the creation of a safer Internet for children and other youngsters”.

The general idea is that every one of us should – nay: must – work for the betterment of the online world, thus helping to create effective opportunities for youth to grow in a positive and definitively beneficial manner.

It become obvious down the years that the Internet is itself a most powerful technology that has, for all practical purpose, reduced the wider world to a virtual global village.

The Internet has the power to influence and, therefore, have a positive or negative impact upon our daily lives – all depending on how it is used.

Indeed, there are several Internet-related online concerns, including misinformation, wrong information, explicit content, cybercrime, and hate speeches that have emerged in the past few years.

This is a dilemma in which Internet users get trapped – with children mostly not knowing what is correct and accept it, or what is not correct and, therefore should be ignored/rejected.

That is largely why governments are introducing age-appropriate design codes on online privacy rights of children.

Also, to protect children from hazardous Internet outcomes, it is important to educate them on all the online opportunities and dangers.

And, one functional way of doing this is via the Safer Internet Day on which to spread awareness on what is right and wrong Internet-wise.

Hence the 2022 theme “Together for a Better Internet”.

STOP BOARDING SCHOOL CRAZE

Enrolling very young children in elementary boarding schools is becoming an issue of concern among experts in Tanzania, including psychologists, most of whom have taken exception to the practice. Generally, a boarding school is a residential school where the pupils/students actually live on campus in dormitories or resident houses, sometimes under the supervision of adults from the school, popular as “dorm parents”.

Fair enough, we say. But what we don’t consider to be fair is the fact that children as young as three are routinely enrolled in elementary boarding schools for their first few years of their formal education.

There is really no earthly reason(s) why parents should go through the trials and tribulations of procreation – and then just as soon abandon or otherwise consign their young offspring to an elementary boarding school so early in their innocent age.

Family upbringing of children from their very early stages is crucial to the creation and shaping of their future personages.

Depriving children of this natural right in favour of early formal education for them is a misguided approach to the noble concept of procreation, parental caring and exemplary future generations.

It is a practice that should be most vehemently discouraged.