Forde decries negative social media trend

A local government minister has spoken out against a negative social media trend, which sees Barbadians being swift to send photos of persons who have died as a result of gun violence or other tragic circumstances.

Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, Cynthia Forde, who serves as the Parliamentary Representative for St. Thomas, recently decried the negative social media trend and she even went a bit
further, calling for the more formally structured media to do their part in also spreading positive messages across the country, rather than negative news.

Her comments came during the installation ceremony for the Sharon Environmental Avengers at the Sharon Primary School in St. Thomas recently, where she stressed that more positive actions being taken by young people should be highlighted across social media platforms and splashed across the papers of traditional media houses.

She meanwhile warned that the gruesome images being shared are affecting children, who at times get access to them.

“There is too much anger, bitterness, rancor. The Bible says in one of our commandments, ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and rather than putting minds and souls and hearts together for the young children to be able to emulate what adults do, every day there are bombarded with some (negative incident) that is happening and it is affecting not only the adults, but these wonderful children because some of the parents do not understand and they splash everything with blood coming through somebody’s head and their heart and their nose in social media and our children access it. It is not fair to these young kids,” the Minister asserted.

“And (for the) media houses, I am saying it again and when I get back (in office) I am going to call the call-in programme (about this matter), even if it is only for two minutes, because it is not the whole of Barbados that is experiencing this, it is in pockets and we have to lend all of our moral support, our prayers, our guidance, everything to the police officers, the nurses and doctors, those in the medical field … those who are the teachers and (those other key actors across the) society, including the churches. Let us pull our resources together,” Minister Forde asserted. (RSM)