(Mohamednur Mamo is the Youth Governor for Mandera County and a student leader at Mount Kenya University)
While social media remains a powerful tool for communication, our youths should learn a few things about decorum while using it.
Lately, social media platforms have been turned into wrestling rings where any political leader perceived to have failed in the dispensation of his mandate is ruthlessly attacked.
The online fights are started and sponsored by us youths who exhibit the sycophancy syndrome. Our lashing out is not on the basis of merit but purely because we are defending a certain leader to safeguard his self-interest.
Often, we complain that our leaders are not doing this and that and the only thing one can achieve by doing this on social media is likes, shares, retweets and comments but nothing much changes.
The aftermath of such is that we create the ‘divide and rule’ kingdom because out of our sycophantic engagements on social media, we are divided and politicians take advantage of these divisions.
But there are other better ways to channels issues of concern within the community other than resulting in abusive language or incitement. Here is what you can do:
1. Call for a forum to discuss and engage each other on transformative agenda
2. Lobby for inclusion in the government of the day
3. Address your problems through the area representatives
4. Take action against misuse of public resources through proper channels. If you come across such cases, call for dialogue with leaders and address the problem.
5. Call for negotiations
6. If your grievances fall on deaf ears, hold peaceful demonstrations
A point worth to note is that there is a sizeable number of young people who spend much of their time in the day on social media than they spend to better their lives.
A clarion call to them is that there is so much to do out there including community service in different forms.
Nonetheless, the use of social media would only come in handy in bolstering community service possibly by creating awareness on important issues or educating the community.
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