Dear Editor,

Technology continues to revolutionise our daily lives and habits. It is such a vital tool in our 21st-century existence that everyone needs to be connected; otherwise, one would be left behind significantly.

Young people are particularly technologically perceptive and adapt quickly to the trends, social online behaviour, and slangs. Our youth are frequently connected on social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, and are exposed to all sorts of content — the educational and entertaining as well as the inappropriate and insensitive. This raises the question: Who is influencing our young people?

On the academic side, many students rely heavily on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) platforms, such as
ChatGPT and DeepSeek, to ‘think’ for them and complete assignments. You can imagine the challenges this practice poses for academic ethics and integrity. Research shows that students’ overdependence on GenAI tools leads to cognitive erosion — a decrease in creative, critical, and problem-solving skills.

Recently, I was teaching an undergraduate academic literacy class and asked the students to define paraphrasing. One young man responded, “Putting ChatGPT in your own words.” Although he might have said it in jest, it speaks to the current landscape of higher education.

In the wider online context we have an equal or perhaps more worrying concern: I believe our children and teens are being raised by TikTok. In this age of creatives, social media influencers, and content creation, they repeatedly hear ‘taps and roses’.

They see live the vulgar, sexually explicit, toxic, and violent content that many TikTokers share on their platforms to maintain an online influence and earn some money. There are no guard rails; everything is just loose. Imagine just scrolling through social media and learning of people’s private sexual encounters against your will.

What kind of generation are we raising? Beyond the quick cash that comes with certain social media platforms, what values are they gaining? Whose philosophy are they guided by? Who are their role models?

Money and fame cannot be the sole end goals. What about a solid education, decorum, professionalism, and soft skills?

We are certainly seeing a shift in perspectives and values. Prior generations had a different set of ambitions. They aspired to be a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, or a police officer. However, today the focus is on taps and roses. Since that is the direction, there must be a way to teach social media literacy and online etiquette, especially as we have to be careful of our digital footprint.

Oneil Madden

maddenoniel@yahoo.com