Edward Nnachi
Experts have urged women to monitor their children’s use of social media in order to protect them against cyber hawks and other vices online at the just concluded Social Media Week 2017 in Lagos.
Speaking at the event on theme, “Parenting in an Era of Techonogy”, Founder/Executive Director, W.TEC, Mrs. Oreoluwa Lesi said there is need to monitor and get involved in what the children do to save them from the other negative influences of social media, adding the programme was designed to showcases the brightest and best minds discussing, exploring, debating and learning about the impact of social media on our lives.
The panel was hosted by Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre. She added that if children are left to use mobile technologies as they wished, it could lead them to bad influences and irresponsible citizens.
The W.TEC event ‘’Parenting in an Era of Technology’’ was set to present and explore the efficient ways of raising children in a technology-focused era. The programme’s format was a presentation forum with a panel comprising of parents and educational-technology experts. They indeed presented key areas for parents to adopt in supervising their children’s use of technology devices, examined new technologies that would support parenting, also they presented how parents could draw a balance between too much or too little technology for their children and also treated the dangers children face online, highlighting the strategies that could be adopted to help children stay safe online.
According to Mr. Yemi Fawehinmi, an education and human resources consultant, who was also a panelist on the programme, maintained that although the negative sides of social media have been over-flogged, it was important to note that if we desired to have a society that is highly competitive tommorrwo the children must be allowed access to modern information and communication technologies.
He said that we as adult in Nigeria were trying hard to compete with others in the advanced because our parents neither had access to information technologies nor exposd us to them.
The well-attended event had mostly women in attendance, who were medium and high scale entrepreneurs, student of universities, online enthusiast and the public at large, were treated to an interesting two part presentation sessions.
Other panelists on the programme included Mrs. Yetunde Williams of Lagos Mums; Dr Oluwakemi Olurinola of Exquitec Education Tech; Mrs. Terea Onyeje of KraveX.
The second session was a Q & A forum, where the audience got to ask good tech based questions from the panelist on their various presentations mostly on how to take advantage of safety strategies to making it safe for children online.
The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) is a Nigerian non-governmental organization working to encourage Nigerian girls and women to use information and communication technology (ICT) to empower themselves socially and economically. This is done through technology literacy training, technology-based projects, mentoring, work placement and research. W.TEC works in partnership with local and international NGOs, educational and research organizations.
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