As technology permeates the corridors of schools, there is need to know better who is at risk with ICT, what prevention and how treatment strategies work best.
Technology application in schools -in all its rigid sense- has been at the same work for ages considering that every learner is the maker of his or her future.
In contemporary Zambia, education has produced a vast population that was able to apply ICT but unable to distinguish what was worth benefits of the technological advancement.
The trouble with young people is not that they do not know but that they know so much that is not worthy. With the advent of technology in schools, Zambia needs a thorough and complete education system which fits the learner to perform justly, skillfully towards igniting development using ICT.
In his response to ICT application in schools and its potential to overwhelmingly corrupt the end-users, Minister of Education John Phiri calls for new guidelines to regulate the use of technology among learners in schools.
Dr Phiri disclosed in an interview that the power of information technology and communication (ICT) has the potential to benefit the welfare of learners and also could work as a weapon to destroy the morals of the technology users.
The minister regrets that there are no clear guidelines on the use of technology in schools, contending that technology application in schools could be beneficial as it avails a lot of advantages to the users.
Dr Phiri observes: “We need new guidelines to regulate the use of technology in schools and the Ministry of Education (MoE) needs to sit down with other stakeholders to address the issue. Technology can be beneficial and at the same time could be like any other weapon to corrupt the morals of the users. It can turn against the learners.”
Peace Temple Redeemed Methodist Church’s Paul Bupe put it bluntly that technology application in learning institutions was severely being abused by young people and that stringent measures should be instituted urgently to address the ICT misuse in schools.
Dr Bupe bemoans that the country has not yet developed technology ethics to regulate the usage of ICT in schools effectively attributing high levels of ignorance among the users as a pointer to misuse of technology in learning out-fits.
He said that technology is developing faster than ethics to regulate it. We have not educated people on the positive and negative consequences of technology application in schools. The Church, Government and other stakeholders must focus on educating recipients of technology in schools.
To Dr Bupe, learning institutions should impose rules that govern ICT application in learning institutions. More than that, parents should play a key role to help address the challenges that come along with the introduction of technology in schools.
He argues that working ethics should be developed on technology use by society, adding that more should be done to educate users on the positive and negative aspects of technology usage. He calls on the Church, Government, parents and other stakeholders to craft policies to address the abuse of technology especially among learners.
But as the social networking technology increases, it will be interesting to see how our fledging society would merge the positive and negative underpinning challenges ignited by technology use among learners.
Add some graphic photos or explicit text to the negative impact of technology application among young people with more teenagers sending and receiving corrupt photographs of their peers. This obviously has the potential to be problematic for the average person -imagine the impulse-driven nightmare ‘sexting’ brings to the predisposed to sexual problems.
The 2010 study by Sexual Recovery Institute (Califonia) and George Washingston University entitled ‘Smart Phones, Social Networking, Sextring and Problematic Sexual Behavious – A Call for Research’ says it all that sexting is not just an adult phenomenon.
Polls have indicated that up to 20 per cent of teens have sent nude photographs of themselves or others via text images. Sexting has challenged society’s definitions of normal adolescent behaviour, problematic sexual behaviours -felony sex crime.
It is evident that the figures are swelling of people seeking treatment today not just for problems with porn, prostitution websites or chats because they are challenged by obsessive searching of social networks like Facebook, Myspace, twitter, among others.
Little wonder recent studies show that sexual links are the most commonly shared sites on Facebooks. Others meet school friends, view illicit movies with love addicts losing themselves to endless cruising for anonymous sex or affairs.
The porn use has become addictive, controlling much of the time and thoughts of most addicted teens in schools -a run-off from overly demanding school chores and troubled family backgrounds.
Today online porn’s accessibility, anonymity and affordability all play a role in hooking individuals.
Worse still, excessive Internet use was more likely to harm the morals of learners in schools as a population group.
The Korea Ministry of Information and Communication report of 2004 says this population is deemed to be vulnerable because of the accessibility of Internet and the flexibility of their schedules, that is, students are vulnerable to Internet addiction because of many factors such as difficulty adapting to life away from home and underlying psychological problems, including depression or social anxiety.
Assistant professor at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea, Jong-Un Kim writes: “Thus, college students with quite a lot of discretionary time on their hands and adjusting to the new schedule on campus are susceptible”.
Zambia National Union of Teachers secretary general, Newman Bubala, acknowledges that the world was dynamic and that ICT introduction in schools should be accompanied by regulations and rules on its application.
Mr Bubala firmly argues that learners found using computers or phones to access illicit images that corrupt the morals of society should be severely punished.
In any case, what is porn addiction? Copperbelt University behavioural sciences lecturer in the school of medicine, Njinga Kankinza, says that addiction to pornography is compared to any other addiction where the euphoric feeling – or high – comes from chemicals released into the brain, rather than from an external source like drugs or alcohol.
Ms Kankinza says that when teens and school children get addicted, they create own identity and explore the Internet to discover themselves.
She intones: “We live in a country where psychology is still growing. In the Western world, they have different psychologists addressing different forms of addictions and they have rehabilitation centres which use cognitive behavioural therapy which is a technique to know how one thinks and the extent of the addiction.
Based on that, they look at behaviour patterns. There is group therapy where an expert sits down among addicts to discuss their problems and family therapy.”
Ms Kankinza, who is also a psychologist at the Psychiatric department at Ndola Central Hospital, says in an interview that like any other form of addiction, a person can re-lapse and get back to the old behaviour. She proposes a holistic approach – a multi-disciplinary therapy– to address addiction among learners.
With slim numbers of psychologists in the country, she counsels that there was need to institute practical interventions both at the work place and in schools where affected people are encouraged to get involved in other activities such as sports, reading, joining social clubs, theatrical activities, among others, to minimise time spent on Internet -now the source of mind corruption.
The psychologist says that some illicit sites on Internet should be blocked by the service providers and that a component of life-skills should be included in school curriculum, adding that ICT users should be educated on vagaries of misusing the technology.
She quips: “Addiction interferes with relationships as the victims are isolated from other people and they don’t learn from their mistakes through interaction with others.
Teens grow up with unrealistic view on sex because their minds are corrupted from viewing porn. The big component is that it interferes with normal functioning addicts. More research is needed and Internet providers could also avail data on how many people go to porn sites to give us a picture of the extent of the situation.”
In porn addiction -which is prominent among the learners- the primary focus is on pornographic literature or images.
Internet addiction, which is addiction disorder, pathological Internet use, excessive internet use and compulsive Internet use, has the potential to stimulate moral decay.
Technology is a chief source of porn addiction which is activated from visual stimulus of looking at pornographic magazines, movies, books, or web sites.
Technology should not be used as an excuse to conceal specific human weaknesses to corrupt the minds of users, let alone the learners.
Unregulated application of ICT, in all its forms, will oppose moral strands and ethical precepts, a good recipe for human disrepair.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Martin Nyiernda
Quelle/Source: Times of Zambia, 05.11.2012
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