In South Africa, most people have heard of the extremely popular home-grown sms and mobile chat service known as MXit, and if you haven’t by now and you’re a parent (no not of a Yorkshire terrier called ‘Scotty’), then this post is particularly aimed at you.
As MXit continues to grow and prosper and feature in the local press, so too has it started to run into various social problems which have seen it develop a rather infamous reputation amongst the police and parents of teenagers. Unlike a desktop computer connected to the Internet where a whole manner of solutions exist to control or limit a child’s online usage, parents and guardians have very little control when it comes to a personal mobile phone and are often even more ignorant of its capabilities.
For partly this reason, and because of the ability to remain totally anonymous, MXit has become a haven for psychopaths and paedophiles, who are always on the lookout for better ways of targeting unsuspecting victims, especially when 45% of the users fall within the 12-17 age group according to MXit founder creative director Alex Meiring.
In a story that appeared today in the Daily News entitled ‘MXit is great, but don’t be fooled’, the story of a 12-year-old boy who was psychologically scarred by his encounter with a sexual predator alludes to a larger debate around issues surrounding digital culture and hyperreality. But whose responsibility is it to protect children from the nasty underbelly of society and is the existence of sexual predators in chat rooms posing as 13-year-olds the only cause for concern?
To their credit, MXit have agreed to cooperate with police and have helped track down perpetrators who have committed crimes through their network. They have also implemented a number of features to try and make the chat rooms a safer place for teens and have also published a parental advisory for concerned parents. Is this enough? Probably not, but it never is in a digital environment where the boundaries become blurred between the real and the unreal and trust becomes something constructed with something that resembles a Magic 8-Ball.
I happen to know first-hand the antisocial effect of MXit on my girlfriend’s 17-year-old sister who becomes anxious whenever her cellphone leaves her side and even wakes up in the middle of the night to see who is ‘online’ in case she’s missing something big. Do I blame MXit? Of course not, because I don’t believe you should pin a social problem on a technology when education and responsibility should begin at home.
I get very irritated when I hear about parents leaving their kids to their own devices and showing no interest in their social (or unsocial) lives and then flipping their lids and blaming someone or something else when they find out that their little Johnny has developed a ‘problem’ or has been taken advantage of. In fact, what’s stopping schools from introducing ‘Digital Responsibility’ classes or educating learners about the implications of being a teenager in a post-modern society? Perhaps it’s because they would have to accept some form of responsibility and drop things like Physical Education from the curriculum! the tragedy.
1 Mike Oct 25th, 2006 at 1:50 pm“Of course not because I don’t believe you should pin a social problem on a technology when education and responsibility should begin at home.” — perfectly said!
Oh and by the way, Alex Meiring is not the founder of MXit, he is the creative director. Herman Heunis is the founder.
2 Colin Daniels Oct 25th, 2006 at 2:04 pmThanks for that clarification Mike. This was misreported in the Daily Mail story:
“‘For this reason’, Alex Meiring, director of Clockspeed Mobile and creator of MXit…”
3 Ray H Oct 26th, 2006 at 10:24 amOkay class, now take out your cell phones and connect to the digital responsibility network. Hey! I don’t want that kind of language in my class, even by SMS! And my toupe DOES NOT SUCK, okay!
4 Colin Daniels Oct 26th, 2006 at 10:33 amRay, it’s a good thing that you don’t have to worry about attending school no more because bubble-gum and toupes are not a good combination mkay…
5 Inyoka Oct 27th, 2006 at 8:38 pmI agree absolutely. Discipline, making a child aware of the dangers in life and pointing them right direction is the responsibility of the parent.
However, never underestimate the usefulness of PE. Try living in the UK, where there is hardly any ‘real’ PE and no afternoon sport. (Competition is frowned upon).
We have the highest incidence of obesity in Europe, mainly because the bulk of population’s defining moment as sportspersons is channel switching using a digital remote.
I watched a bunch of young secondary school children (13 year olds) playing with a tennis ball in a school playground the other day. My wife’s year two children at Selborne Primary had better ball skills and coordination.
No shit.
6 Kate Oct 30th, 2006 at 7:05 pmNot quite related to the post, but to Inyoka’s comment:
Last week, my boyfriend and I were taking a stroll around the nearby park in Edinburgh. We stopped to watch a group of boys (aged 8-11) playing football. It was truly upsetting to watch- not their lack of ball skills (although there was that too)- but the abuse they hurled at each other was mind blowing.
I’m pretty foul mouthed when I want to be, but I almost died when I heard what one pre-teen shouted at his friends. You can just tell he picked it up watching his dad shout at the tv.
Kids learn from both attention and neglect! Kids know how to manipulate both. You cant supervise your children 24/7 and I dont think you should. But, in my layman’s opinion, 90% of what they do is determined by their upbringing years before they do it.
7 Colin Daniels Nov 2nd, 2006 at 2:05 pmInyoka & Kate: You still choose to live with those bergies?
8 sandisiwe ema Aug 17th, 2007 at 8:27 pmmxit has taken over some teenagers lifes they can’t live without it it is not right we must consitrate on our school work now and leave mxit alone i am a teenager but i don’t like mxit and i am ryin to help my friends also