Mobile telephony a bane on morals of minors - survey

A survey on the exposure of minors to multimedia mobile phones has just been published in Douala. According to the report, nearly 25 minors out of 100 acknowledged that, they patronised gambling organized by minor via mobile telephony.

40 boys out of 100 and 20 girls out of 100, view obscene content via Internet on the mobile phone without any restriction. These are the statistics provided in the report on exposure and the exploitation of children users of mobile telephony in Cameroon, as published recently by the Apda (Association for peace & development in Africa).

The 30-page document is the result of a survey conducted from July 2014 to February 2015 with 1,600 students aged 10 to 21 years, registered in six schools in the city of Douala.

According to the target sample, study shows that 81.1% of contacted minors have a multimedia mobile phone. Results that Landry Ndenmeko Bankoue, Coordinator of the Apda in the pages of the national newspaper Thursday, called 'love relationship that links Cameroonian children to ICT'.

"At first, exposure to pornographic content by children or minors was possible only through television, the cinema and desktop computers", reveals the report. "Today, phones and mobile digital tablets allow them through a simple connection to the Internet to view movies and pictures everywhere, even on the field, at school, in the bathroom, in Church, in the room, etc.".

Other dangers posed to minors via the internet as listed in the investigative report include direct access to paedophiles, sex operators, crooks, smugglers and terrorists'.

The minors who are innocence and psychological immature are vulnerable to these illegal activities which are not just dangerous but often fatal".

The report thus underlined these to the association to appeal to Government to enforce a regulatory and legal measures to create strict framework in the use of internet "which would still be the responsibility of the operators of telecommunications.