Rania Chakhtoura, "Akhbar al-Yawm" agency

Mirai Awwad to "Akhbar al-Yawm": we must reject what does not suit us and contradicts our societies and values

 Positive news have become rare in Lebanon... The media and social networking sites have been abuzz in the past few hours with the news of the arrest of a celebrity on TikTok ( George Mobayed- hair zone) and other members of a gang that "practiced" the rape of children and minors.

This incident leads to highlighting the dangers, especially sexual ones, caused by social networking sites available to children and kids and aimed at serving large consumer markets and personal interests, where the responsibility lies primarily on parents, then on schools and all those responsible for education.

Professor of economic and social development Mireille Saliba Awwad, via the "Akhbar al-Yawm" agency, stresses the importance of the culture that parents must follow to protect their children from what they are exposed to as a result of following social networking sites.

She said: "Nowadays, due to life pressures and long working hours, parents are putting smartphones in their children's hands without monitoring the content they view during the long times they spend in front of screens, as they consider these phones to be a means of entertainment without taking into account the dangers they hide. But in reality, children enter dangerous platforms and programs, and private messages come to them, which most of the time carry negative content".

In this context, Awwad warns of what children are exposed to through platforms that spread beliefs that contradict our religious, social and cultural values, such as pornographie, the genderqueer or the absence d'identité sexuelle, in the sense that what children see favors the absence of gender identity, which is associated with sexual messages and harassment...

Here, Awwad advises parents to take some steps, including limiting the time of sitting in front of the screen, following up on the content that children view and what they do from the search on these engines or sites they use, saying: "Parents should be keen to follow their children and learn about the culture that reaches them through the practice of censorship".

Awwad also talks about the "role of education" that schools and teachers should play by organizing awareness seminars that highlight the social war that we are exposed to and its main goal is to dismantle the family and society.

Remembering that war is not only military, but there are types of wars that may be more severe serving large societies and large consumer markets that are interested in targeting the family and the disintegration of social and religious values, Awwad explains the objectives of awareness seminars in schools prepared by specialists and raises these problematic issues in an objective manner that gives a comprehensive picture of what is happening at the global level, where we should not accept everything offered by Western cultures blindly and randomly, but must choose what suits us and reject what does not suit us and contradicts our societies and values.

On the other hand, Awwad also calls for taking advantage of social media platforms and the presence of children from all social and age groups in order to raise awareness of the negatives and the risk of exploiting children and adolescents through harmful marketing, stressing the importance of breaking all taboos and launching "outreach campaign" in order to highlight the negative effects and take caution.