- “Gen Z isn’t just growing up online — they’re living there. But the comfort of scrolling comes with silent dangers parents too often ignore.”
By Ebube Bruno
CALABAR (CONVERSEER) – Gen Z is the first generation of true digital natives. They were born into broadband, raised on smartphones, and socialise in timelines rather than town squares. But this “always on” reality comes with a shadow that many parents underestimate — the risks of unchecked social media.
Let me tell you a story. A few years back during my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme in Nigeria, I was having a discussion with a parent and somehow he got to talking about how his 3-year-old child stays in his tab through the night and finally dozes off around 5
a.m.
I related the story at our Media and Editorial Community Development Service (CDS) meeting at the Cross River Broadcasting Service premises. Our CDS coordinator said something I find very instructive: “A child who roams the internet that long is like a child who roams the streets, bushes and marketplaces at night.”
Take the case of Molly Russell, the 14-year-old British schoolgirl who died by suicide in 2017 after being bombarded with self-harm content on Instagram. In 2022, a coroner’s inquest officially ruled that harmful online content “contributed to her death.” That ruling forced Meta, Instagram’s parent company, to re-evaluate its safety guardrails and pushed UK regulators to accelerate the Online Safety Bill, which now demands stricter accountability from tech platforms. That tragedy wasn’t isolated. Across borders, the same warnings echo.
Across the Atlantic, US states are suing social media giants. Just last year, more than 40 attorneys general filed lawsuits against Meta, alleging that Instagram was designed to be addictive and harmful to children’s mental health. In some states like Utah and Arkansas, laws now ban under-18s from opening social media accounts without parental consent.
Even beyond the courtrooms, young people themselves are protesting. In 2023, American High School students staged coordinated walkouts demanding that tech companies stop exploiting teen attention spans for profit. Their slogan: “We are not your experiment.” Pew Research in the US supports this concern having found that nearly half of teens feel ‘addicted’ to their phones.”
These aren’t abstract debates. They cut into real lives and real health.
A global 2023 UNICEF report found that one in five adolescents spends more than six hours a day online outside of schoolwork. Excessive exposure isn’t just about psychological scars like anxiety, FOMO (fear of missing out), cyberbullying, or self-esteem crashes. Insomnia from late-night scrolling leaves teens ‘zombified’ in morning classes. Eye strain from screen fatigue sends children to optometrists earlier than any generation before. And sedentary hours hunched over phones are creating what doctors now call ‘tech neck’, a postural epidemic. This reality stares at the 3-year-old night roamer in my first story, if his dad and mom do not apply helpful measures.
In Nigeria and across Africa, as well as in countries from the UK to the US and parts of Asia, parents and schools are increasingly alarmed at rising screen dependence: whether it’s TikTok addiction, compulsive scrolling, or online gambling disguised as games.
And yet, Gen Z won’t and shouldn’t be pushed offline. The digital is their social lifeline, their classroom, and their playground. The challenge is how to keep it safe.
The real challenge for parents, policymakers and tech firms is not to lock the gates but to light the streets — making the digital space safer without cutting off its opportunities.
Instagram’s new safety tools, Facebook’s new Ten Account, Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, parental monitoring apps — in my next column, I’ll show you what’s working, what’s failing, and what Nigerian families need to know right now.
