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A survey conducted by non-profit group, Child Online Africa, has revealed that social media consumes about 24% of the productive hours of Ghanaian parents.

The survey showed that Ghanaian parents are spending a significant amount of their time on social media, a disturbing trend that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

According to the survey, on average, sleep takes 24%, entertainment takes 12%, while household chores and errands consume 8% and 4% respectively, of the productive hours of the adult population.

Presenting the findings at a workshop by Child Online Africa, a facilitator, Desmond Israel, stated that the trends need to change else, this may have dire implications on families.

“Work covers everything else from school for the young ones and then work for the adult who is actually engaged in something productive.

“But if you look at the statistics in detail, the real use of the time has varied. You’d see that you actually give only 4% to family…and social media is a whopping 24%. Work takes 24%. So, your productive work hours is now competing with social media,” he disclosed.

However, the Executive Director of the group, Awo Aidam Amenyah, has called for proper parental guidance on the use of internet tools by children.

“You know that when you connect to a device, it gets so exciting, you get to do things easily; it’s all fun. Nobody thinks about any other thing apart from being able to do the work effectively. That has to do with the connectivity but then when it’s time for us to disconnect, it’s hard for us.

“Some of us, during the Covid-19 situation, we had difficulty just staying at home without our devices or without being connected to our devices. All these things that we do have implications for us and even for the children that we are dealing with.

“When you sit down and think through what the effect of overuse of a device brings to you, it only brings some fear in you to be mindful whether you should even purchase the device for the child or not.

“Clearly, it has short and long-term effects and these effects will have to be deliberately thought through before we can be able to make meaning of them,” she stated.