LAGOS – Some academics and parents on Thursday called for a thorough supervision of the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by children.The academics and parents expressed their views in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos as the world celebrated the International Day of Families.
A former Head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Benin (UNIBEN), Dr. Phillip Ujomu, said that parents and guardians must be willing to supervise the use of ICT by their children.
“There is no doubt that ICT can increase positive exchange between parents and their children. However, parents must assume ethical responsibility in supervising the use by their children.
“The use of ICT must be timed by parents; children must not be allowed to spend all their time on the internet,” Ujomu said.
Dr Isaac Ukpokolo, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ibadan, said that ICT, when guided, impacted positively on the children’s education and the environment.
Ukpokolo said that ICT was important since the world was now a global village.
“If children are allowed to use ICT unguided, its negative impact on the children can be colossal.’’
He said some of the negative effects of ICT were a withdrawn personality, with the child developing an unrealistic personality, and strange ideologies.
A Lagos-based Legal Practitioner, Mrs Cherry Omobaba, said that ICT exposed children to things that parents could not control.
“Children develop tendencies of homosexuality and lesbianism from what they watch in the foreign media,” Omobaba said.
An author, Mrs Nkechi Adidhiogu, said that the practice of children spending more time online was counterproductive.
Adidhiogu, who authored, “Mummy’s child’’, a book on girl-child development, said, “many children, these days, open x-rated internet sites to watch pornographic materials.
A journalist and grandmother, Mrs Mary Wilfred, told NAN that it was worrying to think that many youths were being given wrong direction early in life by the wrong use of ICT.
“This translates into a poor reading culture.
“Some youths as a result of ICT, do not read their Bibles,” Wilfred said.
She appealed to the government to provide more regulators, to regulate activities in the ICT sector.
NAN reports that every year, the U.N. celebrates the International Day of Families on May 15, every year.
The UN first proclaimed the celebration in 1994, in response to the changing social, economic and political structures affecting the stability of family life in the modern world.
Its purpose is to celebrate the importance of families to people, societies and cultures around the world. (NAN)
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