Group seeks empowerment of teenagers with social media literacy skills

Teenagers
By Ibukun Emiola
Ibadan, Aug. 5, 2019 (NAN) Mrs Geraldine Ezeobi, Project Coordinator, Centre for Applied Ethics and Political Communication in Africa (CAEPOCOM AFRICA), has called for the empowerment of teenagers with social media literacy skills.

Ezeobi said that this had become necessary as the teenagers were the largest group of social media users in Nigeria.

She made the call on Monday in Ibadan on the sidelines of a media literacy skill programme, organised by CAEPOCOM AFRICA.

Ezeobi noted that the creators of media contents on various social media platforms had responsibilities toward the consumers of their media contents.

“It is imperative to be media literate as teenagers may never know how much danger they expose themselves to by not having the right skills in engaging the media,” Ezeobi said.

She said that the participants at the programme, who were mostly girls, were taught how to apply content analysis to sieve some of the popular music they were familiar with as well as analyse the lyrics and the messages being disseminated.

This, she said, was imperative so as to identify the contents that could further damage societal norms and values.

Ezeobi stressed the need for the participants to ask some salient questions before engaging the media and have the right skills to discern what contents they were absorbing.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the two-day girls’ summit with the theme, ‘Think, Build, and Innovate,” was organised in partnership with Women’s Research and Documentation Centre of the University of Ibadan.

NAN also reports that over 200 girls between the ages of 10 and18 drawn from various secondary schools in Ibadan attended the summit. (NAN)
IBK/WAS/OJO
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(Edited by ‘Wale Sadeeq/Mufutau Ojo)