Understanding the Two Worlds of Social Media and Internet

If our mission is not to correct, then what is our mission? This is the key question that drives this handbook. It contains some basic guidelines and crucial information aimed at mobilising the hearts and minds of adults and children alike, in the quest to amplify the social voices in the call to promote a sensible, responsible and progressive use of social media. Unfortunately, it is the very same digital space used by scholars, friends, families and job seekers for progressive purposes that is also being exploited by cold-hearted online predators, agents of human trafficking, and peddlers of fake and malicious news. There has been a relentless increase in the number of reported disappearances and subsequent killing of people after having befriended and interacted with strangers on social media platforms. The high prevalence cases of underage users, cyberbullying and social media addiction warrants an urgent social conversation to set up a preventative or precautionary safety net, by educating society of the ever lurking dangers posed by the ‘dark’ side of the world of social media and the internet.

This handbook defines and discusses the following:

Social media addiction, how to spot a social media addict and how to deal with it

Underage users and the monitoring without infringing the right to privacy

Technology and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Curbing fake news, misinformation, forged and “doctored’ digital materials

Social media ‘group’ page management

Cyberbullying, how to spot a cyberbullied person and how to deal with it

Human trafficking, xenophobic, homophobic and other hateful content

The do’s and don’ts

Moral and legal obligations