Social Media, much more than fines, by Okoh Aihe

The hefty fine of $940m placed on Meta in New Mexico has retained Social Media in the centre of unwanted discourse and concerned efforts by jurisdictional authorities to deal with a menace that threatens today as well as the future of nations since the young ones are mostly affected in a world that seems to be laced with social poison.

In Nigeria, the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, alongside the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), conducted a survey which shows that 83 percent of surveyed Nigerians support some form of Social Media regulation for minors.

While fines could be a reasonable deterrent to the Social Media big-heads like Meta, Google, ByteDance, Tencent and Microsoft, among others, some jurisdictions are embarking on alternative actions to clip the wings of the platform providers; put them away permanently from the lives of the young ones.