Too much social media? This is, of course, a global problem leading some countries like Australia to apply minimum age limits to the creation of accounts on popular social media services. This particular age limits “solution”, interestingly enough, highlights the core issue of how access to unregulated information poses a potential hazard to impressionable young minds.
Bad news then for the Philippines when one considers that this is a country renowned for its people’s stunted comprehension faculties. According to a recent report, inauthentic agents and communities on the Net have “shaped the conversation” surrounding this year’s mid-term elections there.
[…] up to 45% of discussions about the elections – a showdown between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the Duterte camp – have been driven by inauthentic accounts, including sock puppets, avatars and bots.
“What we found in the Philippines isn’t just disinformation spike – it’s digital warfare,” said Cyabra’s chief executive, Dan Brahmy.
Step back and take the time to put two and two together. Potent mind-altering substances such as alcohol and narcotics have long been regulated and, in the case of the latter, prohibited. Severe penalties are applied to people who use them when operating dangerous machinery (which includes common road vehicles).
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
The key words here are mind-altering. It describes the key impact of these substances that make them dangerous. Upon this principle, one can then make a strong argument posed by unfettered access to that quintessentially 21st Century mind-altering drug — social media. People under the influence of this substance shouldn’t be allowed to operate dangerous machinery — such as mobile phones which are known to be the primary hardware used to spread disinformation. Like drunk drivers and deranged, ill-trained public bus and jeepney drivers, morons equipped with smartphones are a menace to society.
Think then of just how vulnerable the Philippines is to mind-altering technologies. It is a nation of lazy thinkers. It’s a huge ask of Filipinos to think things through before reacting or forming opinion about a piece of information they would come across over a given day. As a result, public discourse in the Philippines is characterised by a lack of new ideas or a failure to engage with new information. It is easy to observe that this has led to stagnation or decline in the nation’s collective intellectual abilities. Laziness and impoverished minds impede an entire people’s capacity to think critically and engage with the world in a meaningful way.
Indeed, as we observed in a previous article, 50% of Filipinos stunted at childhood in the 1980s could be why the Philippines is so intellectually-bankrupt today!
[Inquirer columnist Cielito Habito] cites the incidence of stunting in Filipino children — that “[the] World Bank sees us as having the fifth highest stunting prevalence in the East Asia and Pacific region, and among the top 10 countries worldwide with the most number of stunted children.” Physical stunting (which is the subject of the WB report) in children likely has a strong impact on brain development. This is the bomb Habito drops on his readers…
One can better appreciate how critical this all is knowing that a child’s first five years is the most critical period in shaping his/her life-long outcomes. There’s a simple reason for this: 90 percent of human brain development occurs by age 5. Development institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme thus see strategic interventions in those early years as the most efficient and effective means to address persistent social and economic inequities. A child stunted at age 5 only has the remaining 10 percent of brain development left, hence is damaged for life with lifelong effects on her/his physical, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional abilities.
Tinapay na nga naging bato pa.
Suddenly it all makes sense. Wonder no more why Filipinos seem to suffer a clearly-evident collective intellectual bankruptcy today.
Therein lies the irony that flies way above Filipinos’ pointed heads. While many harp about the proliferation of “dangerous drugs” against which former President Rodrigo Duterte supposedly waged his “war” and for which he now languishes in The Hague before an “international criminal court”, few realise the technological drug that now addles the minds of an entire generation of young Filipino voters.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.