Osokogu: Perils of social media

[MrVan]

ONE of the numerous downsides of the  Internet revolution is the use of it by perverts, predators and criminals to prey upon naïve, young and impressionable minds.

A huge resource capable of turning enterprising entrepreneurs and creative minds into instant millionaires; an unquantifiable source of knowledge at little cost, is also responsible for tragic loss of precious lives and resources.

The tragic murder of Cynthia Osokogu is a wake-up call to the danger that careless or unsuspecting exposure to the Internet and social media poses.

Osokogu was a post-graduate student of the Nasarawa State University and budding business tycoon, who was lured by her Facebook "friends" to Lagos and strangled.

Because the Internet is a free resource and easily accessible with unlimited content of everything good, bad and ugly, the time has come for concerted efforts to be devised to guide, especially young people, on its use. It is a challenge that faces the entire world. Many believe (and we concur) that the United Nations should evolve a universal protocol on safer use of cyber sphere.

Governments and concerned corporate citizens, especially those providing content and access to this resource, should develop conselling programmes for students and pupils as well as the general public on ways of avoiding corruptive influences and people floating around the Internet, dangling enticing offers and packages with a view to turning those, who take up their offers into victims. The Internet is a scammer's paradise.

Parents and guardians have the greatest role on this issue. Because of the proliferation of smart phones and similar Internet-savvy devices, young children are easily exposed to contents that lure them to dangerous corruption and misadventurism, particularly pornography and other forms of perversion and perverts.

Being a relatively new phenomenon, the more proper and safer use of the Internet and social media is an area of great need for expert attention, which is for now severely lacking. We need a platform for the regulation of access to the Internet, especially by minors.

We also need a lot of serious advocacy by civil society and community based organisations. Practitioners, who provide hardware, content and access must be made to be socially responsible for this novelty, whose corruptive and addictive abilities have been well documented, as illustrated by the Osokogu tragedy.

We cannot afford to continue to leave our youth unguided and unprotected. It should be possible for those entering relationships based on Internet linkages to have means of crosschecking their contacts before meeting them and to alert the law enforcement agents when in doubt.

Vanguard Nigeria