Introduction
Recently I had a need to access the WhatsApp group for my class at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh in Surrey, England, and the last time a post was made in the group was on July 20, 2021!
Instructively it’s important to note that the Admin of this group (which I am one of them) did not need to make any rules about what members are to post and what not to post to the group. There was no need for the Admin to threaten sanctions against erring members. Since the group is for a class at the Seminary, people on their own volition post only matters related to the class. Even the Queen’s husband died, there is Covid in the land, Boris Johnson is doing or not doing what is expected of him, an MP was murdered, birthdays have come and gone, anniversaries have been celebrated, jokes are there, daily or Sunday sermons are preached but from July to November (5 months) no single message was posted to the group about these happenings in England because nobody had anything RELATED TO THE GROUP to post as there are groups for different purposes! The Admin have not been busy monitoring the group so that violators will be sanctioned!
The discipline of WhatsApp group members as highlighted above is totally at variance with the usage of the app in Nigeria where despite different WhatsApp groups been setup for different purposes, members post any and everything under the sun to all groups regardless of the aims and objectives of the groups. The Admin for Nigerian WhatsApp groups first have to make rules on what to post or not but these rules are blatantly disobeyed and the Admins are always busy scanning through hundreds or even thousands of messages to police the groups. The sad thing is that the violators of these simple rules are expected to be responsible citizens such as mothers and fathers, professors, medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, military and police officers etc. Even the clergy and religious are not left out either.
When a typical Nigerian WhatsApp account is accessed, it is common to see hundreds of messages waiting in so many groups but 99% of these messages are forwarded, there is hardly anything original! People are lazy and cannot think, compose and write original thoughts on anything! It is like we all now have PhDs in forwarding technology! The worst part is that we don’t even bother to double check, do due diligence or confirm the contents of the messages we are forwarding thus have unknowingly turned ourselves into accomplices of criminals who are out to harm people online. So, clear 419 job adverts with a url such as www.nigeriajobs.com/firs purporting to be FIRS recruitment is quickly forwarded and goes viral very quickly. Common cybersense should warn that the domain name nigeriajobs.com is not the official FIRS domain which is www.firs.gov.ng and that the nigeriajobs.com domain name though with an extension /fir does not and cannot make it official FIRS publication.
The other terrible thing with Nigerians use of WhatsApp is that our sense of cybersecurity is zero! WhatsApp has made it possible that you can transfer your account from one phone to another. When you want to do this transfer, WhatsApp will send a code to the old phone which you are to apply to the new phone to move your WhatsApp account to the new phone. Now when criminals get your number (which we supply freely on social media when someone says they want to dash free data or things like that) they setup a WhatsApp account on their phone using your number. WhatsApp thinks it’s you who wants to transfer your account, so a code is sent to your phone. The criminal needs that code to steal your WhatsApp account, so the criminal puts a bold call to you and says there’s an online meeting bla bla and they need you to send them the code so that they’ll register you for the meeting. Profs, Drs, Barrs etc without interrogating this criminal just read out the code to them! Once the criminal enters the code on their phone, your WhatsApp account has left your phone to the criminal’s phone. People in your group will just see a message that your number has changed to so and so number. The criminal is busy reading all your WhatsApp messages, if they have enough information they can steal your money in the bank, they also infiltrate your WhatsApp groups and begin to call more people asking them for codes. Some of the criminals even blackmail you for ransoms if they see shady dealings in your WhatsApp messages. With your WhatsApp account in their hands, there are endless possibilities of what crime they can perpetrate with your data.
Anytime someone posts on social media that their accounts have been hacked and advising friends are to beware, it is a confirmation that they behaved recklessly online and thus allowed some miseducated liferals to scam them. Simple cybersecurity defence measures like 2-factor authentication would have mitigated against such a risk!
The Downsides of the Abuse of WhatsApp Groups:
Unfortunately, the abuse of social media platforms such as WhatsApp in Nigeria has negative implications for the individuals, businesses and the nation including the following:
1. Too much junk forwarded to WhatsApp groups keeps Nigerians always on their phones scrolling through the messages because there’s just too much garbage which people have to sieve through to avoid missing something important. People sit in important meetings and functions but are fixated on their phones. People are on social outings, but they aren’t talking to each other because they are on their phones! Parents are paying no attention to kids because the phones are engaging both! Even at places of worship, people pull out their phones and are scrolling through it. There is so much time spent on the phones going through junk that could otherwise have been committed to more productive work.
2. Constantly being on our phones robs us of thinking and reflective times. The biggest ideas are birthed in our quiet moments, but social media contains so much noise that we are no longer thinking.
3. It costs money to buy data to access WhatsApp and other social media handles. With so much junk images and videos, Nigerians are throwing trillions of Naira down the drain without enjoying value for money.
4. Constant access to social media affects our mental health. We become addicted. Then some of the contents erode our long-held principles and values and we become junkies to manipulators who brainwash us with their ideologies. In tragic cases people have taken their lives spurred on by social media con messages.
5. Relationships are strained and even broken because we are paying too much attention to our phones instead of our partners!
6. National productivity is affected because workers are spending too much time on social media instead of delivering on their job responsibilities.
7Social media affects driver safety too as accidents have happened because people were paying attention to their phones instead of on the roads. Other industrial and domestic accidents have happened because of loss of attention by workers who are distracted by the content on their phones.
Conclusion
Social media is a great innovation because opportunities and long lasting personal and business relationships are built and sustained. However, the wrong use of social media as highlighted in this article has negative consequences which must be avoided. One way to overcome addiction to social media is to set aside a specific time daily for social media access and keep strictly to it. Also, members of WhatsApp groups should exercise restraint, decorum and discipline in the use of the groups.
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