Goumbah Andy Wolloh: “Individuals Can Control Their Networks”

Ngoumbah Andy Wolloh, Computer Engineer, talks on the abusive use of social media.

Bad or abusive content in the social media is inevitable because almost everybody has access to it. It operates probably from a distance, with different classes quite of people and unpredictable. We are bound to have abusive use or bad content. We can look at the situation in two parts notably; social media bullying or addictive way of whatsapping or facebooking. I would like to focus on the addictive use of social media. In the face of this situation, I suggest that people should take control of their network and stop playing the victim because there are always people online or offline who will always bother you on Facebook or other social media network. You can eliminate all of these by locking the abuser and minimise your exposure.

Users also need to be focused because if you limit the number of social networks you use, for instancing choosing the ones that are relevant to your working or personal life, it’s going to reduce the abuse. Another solution to this is to call your network. That is, you should not just accept any friend request sent to you. Ensure that you know someone before accepting his/her request or similar mutual friends with the person. Users can also filter the network system in the sense that you can unfriend anyone bogging you.

It is also possible to hide your status so that someone will not know when you are online or not. Users are advised to have a schedule for logging on to the social media like Twitter, Facebook, or Whatsapp. In this case you will minimise your exposure to bad content. If you want to reduce the level of abusive use, it is important to ...