Archbishop cautions youths over dangers of Internet

Speaking at the Third Synod of the Diocese of Lagos Mainland with the theme: “Teach the youths today and fashion the future,” which took place at Cathedral of St. Jude, Freeman Street, Ebute-Metta, Lagos, Akinde warned of the consequence of the perversion the Internet portends to children of this age and called on parents to monitor what their wards do on and with the computer.

I make bold to say that as our youth have access to social media, Internet and information, a lot of those information available to them are not wholesome and parents should not just relax and conclude that since we are in the age of technological breakthrough, their children should be allowed to have total freedom to computer and Internet.

“Information Technology (IT) is my bread and butter as a Professor, but I did not get to know of Internet until I was 40 years old, but amazingly today, you can see an iPad with a five-year old child and the parents are happy that he or she has to belong to the status quo,” he said.

Akinde reminded youths that wisdom of this age is not restricted to the Internet and that they should listen to their parents, who are informed to guide them aright before they bury themselves inside that error.

“I am not unaware of some teachings that anything that is old or archaic is horrible and should be discarded with because they are obsolete and this is nothing but a serious error.

The youth need to learn from their parents and not rely only on modern day information that are latent with perversion,” he warned. Akinde called on the government to do its part by keeping the unemployed youth busy.

“A situation where we have an incredibly high proportion of graduates of tertiary institution idle is dangerous.

These are well and highly skilled manpower of a nation and keeping them idle portends a grave danger to any society and Nigeria cannot be an exception.

“While we do not ask the government to provide employment for every youth that are employable, the government has a compelling responsibility to provide a conducive, economic, social and politically stable environment for them to be able to make a decent living such that those who would like to be self employed would have easy access to loan with the terms of easy repayment,” he said.