Congratulations! You have protected your preteens and teenagers from social media. You are doing the most, in fact, everything at home is password-protected. You even go to work with the TV remote. No one knows the WiFi password, which you in fact change every 18 hours. For maximum security, the passwords are usually composed of ancient Greek symbols.
You check the cache and history of all gadgets in the house and have the skills to retrieve any deleted history. You are armed to the teeth when it comes to making sure that the big bad internet does not corrupt your very curious children, who are on school holiday now.
Keeping them safe from online influence and predators is a full-time job. That is why you chose that remote school in the middle of a swamp 5000km away from civilization. You cannot wait for the holiday to end so they can go back to safety, or so you think.
Well, let me tell you a story. The other day, I was on Instagram idling because I had data and time. I found a random account called Iron Man. Iron Man has 112k followers and 51posts and follows only three people. For context, I have eight posts, 377 followers, and I follow 1,314 , with one of my latest being Iron Man. In case you are wondering, all Iron Man posts are videos of his hands ironing clothes. And yet, he has views, many, at least more than many politicians I know.
After watching the ironing of three yellow, orange, and blue cotton shirts and one green linen trouser, I scrolled again and found another account of a self-proclaimed chef. His most trending video that day was of him beheading mukene (silver fish) with scissors. I watched that for a bit too. By the time I moved on, he had decapitated about 50 of them. I think he was going to cook them after. I will have to go back and watch the end.
Then I came across another account, which somehow led me to a TikTok video. That is where I found him. My colleague’s three-year-old son was on TikTok dancing on the housemaid’s account. She had taken the liberty of choreographing his little performances with herself in the background. At the end of the videos, she would applaud him and hug or give him a resounding high five. Then they would pout at the camera, complete with filters and all.
In one video, she seems to be taunting an ex-lover, saying that even if he left her, she had managed to move on and now even has a handsome and healthy three-year-old with her new lover. Said child (my colleague’s son) was then made to dance around and was awarded a high-five at the end.
I watched all 23 videos with my mouth open, wondering what the colleague was going to do when he found out that his little boy was a social media star and a prop in an online diary of a young woman scorned. The very social media that he has been working so hard to keep his older children away from.
He usually brags about his tight measures and the fact that he has managed to keep his family away from the internet. He has worked so hard that even if he is active on social media, he never posts photos of his children or wives (known and unknown) on the web.
The only reason I know his children is because every morning at work, he walks to anyone nearest to him to show them pictures of the children and regale them with tales of how his toddler can now say, ‘A, B, C, D’. His siblings; all three of them younger than him, are not allowed to post any photos taken with his children on any of their social media accounts.
So now, on top of stalking the children and siblings’ use of social media, he has to stalk his housemaid. What about the gateman? I wonder who else is auditioning little junior on social media while my colleague and the rest of the family are away at school and work.
This got me thinking. You know how your company has a social media policy with all members of the company expected to abide by it; should it be the same our homes? When hiring help, one might have to clearly state where the family stands on social media posts.
Of course, I told my colleague about the videos. I would want to know if it were me.