Ghanaian musician Okyeame Kwame has mentioned how he deals with some of the dangers his children might face on social media.
He told Edem Knight-Tay on Home Affairs that principal among these challenges is pornography.
“Some of the problems that we foresaw was pornography. When my children become teenagers, we sit them down and talk about the dangers of some of the things they see online – the negative and positive effects of watching pornography.
So it is not as though I am telling them that porn is bad, there is a God in Heaven that if you masturbate you will go to hell. Once the children grow up and realize that those things don’t matter, they will go and do it,” he said.
The musician further noted that they rather teach their children how pornography will affect them directly.
“So we let them understand the scientific reasons why it is important to shield yourself against those things. But I think that if you are open-minded, and you are not judgmental and you are having free conversations with your children, they will come and tell you at least 50% of the things that they wish you to know and the rest you will have to use parental threats to find out,” he said.
According to Okyeame, there are times that they reward their children for logging on to websites that provide proper education and also gets them punished when they flout rules set for the use of their gadgets.
His children, Sir Kwame Bota and Sante, who also appeared on the show, opened up on how their activities on social media are regulated by their parents to shield them from abuse and other social media-related attacks.
Okyeame Kwame explained that he and his wife Annica created social media handles and websites for their children when they were born because, with their brands and marketing backgrounds, they knew the children would need them when they grew up.
“Our children woke up to see us working on social media. When both of them were born, they saw us working at a communications company that built websites and managed social media pages of companies.
Throughout their formative years, they are talking social media, so we set up their social media platforms for them. Immediately our child is born, the child gets a web registered domain in their real names, they get all their social media platforms registered so that no one will take them and things like that,” he added.
He said they managed the pages for the children when they were much younger and still monitor what they do on their various platforms even at present.
Hosted by Edem Knight-Tay, Home Affairs, on September 28, 2024, highlighted what goes into introducing children to social media and regulating the content they consume.
Apart from Okyeame Kwame and his children, the programme also hosted Paul Agawu Kakraba, the Technical Director at MLL Technologies Limited and Charity Akpabey, Digital Consultant and Founder of Black Tech Lead.