IRRESPONSIBLE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

MA. CRISTINA M. DELA CRUZ

The proliferation of negative posts and cyberbullying has alarmed the Department of Education (DepEd) that prompted Secretary Leonor M. Briones to express concern over the pervasiveness of social media, and the dangers it poses among children, saying that one cannot avoid social media and even noted that the influence, depth and degree of penetration of social media in all human activities are very wideranging.

Secretary Briones added that although social media is a powerful information tool, they are also potent forces that can be used to spread lies.

As such, in its bid to protect children from the perils of the internet, including fake news and misinformation, DepEd will develop a social media literacy program in school s.

The Deped acknowledged the State of the World’s Children Report published December of last year where Unicef reported one out of three internet users worldwide are children. The same report emphasized “too little is done to protect them from the perils of the digital world and to increase their access to safe online content.”

It can be noted that the country ranks first in time spent on the internet, according to a report published last year by social media management platform Hootsuite and consultancy firm We are Social Ltd.

Even leading international software company Kaspersky Lab identified internet risks that children face online, which include cyber bullying, cyber predators, posting of private information, among others.

For her part, DepEd Undersecretary Lorna Dino explained that currently, social media literacy is incorporated in one of the tracks of the K-12 curriculum. However, considering the magnitude of social media and the internet, the department will develop a separate track dedicated on this after thorough consultations with their stakeholder s.

Undersecretary Dino said that the Department would start with developing the learners’skills of discernment like how to discern facts from fake news, and how to react to social media posts.

A welcome development is the offer of the Presidential Communications Operations Office headed by Secretary Martin Andanar, who has initially expressed intent to help develop this social media literacy program with the DepEd according to Secretary Br i on es.

All of these initiatives and the measures being done by the central office and its field offices in the region and division down to the schools and learning centers, is that responsible use of social media will be a way of life of all learners that will change the landscape of the next generation.

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The author is Teacher III at Maniango Elementary School, Minalin District