A member of the House of Representatives, Rep Joan Mrakpor (Delta, PDP) has cautioned parents against the purchase of cell phones for kids, especially those in Primary Schools.

Mrakpor said this in Abuja on Wednesday. She urged parents not to allow their children or wards to take phones to school as they would serve as distraction.

The female Lawmaker expressed her displeasure at the fact that some parents allow their children who are in Primary Schools to use cell phones without the necessary supervision. She said that if children must have phones, its use must be properly monitored.

Mrakpor further said that adolescent children also needed to be monitored.

“It is an age where you have to softly monitor what they do and give your counsel. But unfortunately, most parents have lost it because they cannot five what they do not have.

Most guardians or parents do not even have what is required to monitor or give a proper guide to the adolescents.

“I am very sorry for my words. Most parents and most guardians live irresponsible lives. The children watch their fathers go out in the night, carrying different types of women.

The children know about their fathers’ girlfriends. They watch their fathers brutalise their mothers over arguments and quarrels, and vice versa,” she alleged.

“Dating the girl that is the age or even younger than their children. How will a father like that come up tomorrow to begin to tell a son or a daughter, ‘Be careful what you do. There is HIV in town. You have to live a responsible life.’?”

She further alleged that even mothers now do the same things, to retaliate.

Mrakpor then urged adolescents to stand up for their own destinies by knowing that the things they do at their adolescent age will affect their adult life.

Speaking on the effect of social media on adolescents, she expressed the need for the social media to be strictly monitored and regulated by the government. “As it is today, it is an all-comers affair.

You go to the social media and see lots of horrible things on how to have sex, how to get pregnant, how to execute self-help-abortion and how to commit suicide, among others.

“You can get some children between ages 12, 13 and 14, who would tell you what pills or concoction to take to get rid of pregnancies. So, social media has done more harm than good to the adolescents, and all of these are supposed to be controlled.”

“Who is supposed to be doing the monitoring and mentoring? That is the biggest challenge we have now,” Mrakpor said.