South Africa weighs in on global movement restricting social media for under-16s
With growing concern over the impact of social media on children's mental health, several countries, including Australia, France, and even some U.S. states, are calling for a ban on under-16s joining social platforms.
In South Africa, the conversation is gaining momentum as KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC, Nomagugu Simelane raised concerns about the harmful effects of social media.
Simelane recently made an impassioned appeal for parents to get more involved in their children's digital lives.
Speaking on the KZN Health Chat multimedia programme, she warned of the links between social media use and anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and even suicide among young people.
'Our children become severely affected by social media,' said Simelane.
'You realise that as parents, we take it for granted, thinking 'it's just a phone.' But you find cases whereby a child may take their own life, only to find that it's due to the pressure that they had put themselves under, based on what they see on social media.'
Simelane stressed the dangers of cyberbullying and digital peer pressure. She highlighted a case where a learner superimposed another student's face onto a sex worker's profile as an example of the devastating consequences of unsupervised online access.
South Africa now has 26.7 million active adult social media users, with numbers rising by over 700,000 in just one year.
95% of children in grades 4 to 11 (ages 10 to 17) have regular internet access, and 83% of 12-year-olds already possess at least one social media account.
As a South African mother of 11-year-old girls, I can personally attest to how difficult it is to monitor online use.
Like most children today, they turn to Google rather than a library for information, drawn in by content that is visually appealing, addictive, and not always accurate.
This endless stream of algorithm-curated material can leave them anxious, unsettled, and craving even more content, some of which is often not age-appropriate.
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