The Eastern Regional Director for the National Commission for Civic Education (NCC), Madam Ophelia Ankrah, has charged youth in the country to take good advantage of social media as it serves as a valuable communication tool to share, create, and spread information locally and internationally.
To her, students need to use social media as an opportunity to research into areas that would help them to improve and strengthen their level of education, and by extension contribute to their scope of knowledge.
The Eastern Regional Director made the call in a speech during the maiden annual civic programme dubbed “Civocation” at the Presbyterian Senior High and Technical School at Aburi on Saturday.
The programme was graced by other sister schools in the Akuapem South Municipality such as Aburi Girls and Adonten Senior High among others, and were ‘served” with a nice dish of a play on illegal mining and its consequences on the economy.
Touching on the definition of social media, the NCCE Director stated that social media was website and applications that enabled users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
This, she advised the students, and Ghanaian youth in general, to use social media to socialise better by selling or posting their various products to reach more customers to earn more income, rather than sending nude pictures.
She said that social media could be used for a lot of things that were positive and develop the individual by improving their financial status as it could influence consumer’s purchase decisions through reviews, marketing tactics, and advertising.
She charged them to change from their negative ways of using social media and focus on the importance of it.
On child protection, she explained that it was a term used to describe philosophies, policies, standards, guidelines, and procedures to protect children both from intentional and unintentional harm.
Madam Ankrah disclosed that there was the need to protect children online, due to the key funding of child protections on this mass study, and renewal of existing community-based facilitation and social extension resources in Ghana and other countries.
She said that due to technological advancement, children found themselves in an environment protected online, adding that all technological environments children found themselves in could affect them positively or negatively, depending on their values.
The NCCE regional boss averred that there was a high rate of cyber-bullying in the country where the youth use social media to bully people, sending messages of intimidation, threatening people and sending pornographic materials.
She urged the youth who found themselves in this bad situation to find support from Counselors, Reverend Fathers, and Headmistresses in order to assist them to understand themselves and their needs.
She explained, that it could help solve their problems, make realistic decisions, improve their abilities and skills, and to adjust themselves, and cautioned them to refrain from impersonating people’s pictures on social media.
The Akuapem South Director of the NCCE, Mr. Alex Owusu Akyaw, in his welcome address, expressed his profound gratitude to management of the school for making the event possible, and encouraged the students to be highly responsible towards national development.
