ICT Week debate - Has information technology and modern communication invaded a person’s private space? |19 May 2017

As part of activities for ICT week, the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) organised a debate in collaboration with the University of Seychelles, the Seychelles National Youth Council (SNYC) and the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) under the theme: ‘Has information technology and modern communication invaded a person’s private space?’

The debate, which was very lively and hot, was attended by Laurence Janssens, the general manager of Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands Ltd, the principal secretary for ICT Benjamin Choppy, as well as students from various institutions.

There were two teams of young people chosen by SNYC - one agreeing with the theme and the other opposing the fact that our private space has been invaded by the new technologies. The debate was moderated by Raymond Clarisse and the programme will be broadcast on SBC on May 22.

Many questions were asked by Mr Clarisse and automatically the conversation went extensively towards the use of social media, privacy and our choice.

The participants did some research on the topic and cited quite a few facts about the use of social media. Some of the comments were: “Technology that exists, we should know how to use it.” “If you share a photo, you make a choice to make it public and you need to understand your responsibility.” “How many of us present here have accepted a friend request on social media without really knowing that person? Just because that person has some friends in common we accept to be friends with them.” “We are humans and by nature curious, we do not really exercise a control on social media.” “On social media, we do not see the moral implication and sometimes people do post irrational comments and they do regret it forever.” “If a photo of a sensitive nature was posted about somebody, this can ruin his/her chances for a job hunt.”

The moderator of the debate asked one question which created lots of reaction among the audience: “What right do you have to take my photos or my crashed car and put it on social media?” To that many youths added their concerns about current situations that are happening on social media where they feel their private space has been invaded. Other issues that came up were the creation of fake profiles just to ruin somebody’s reputation.

For sure this debate created a lot of reflection among the youth and it was interesting to hear and see that the younger generations are getting more concerned about their privacy. The team agreeing that information technology and modern communication is invading a person’s private space won the debate.

Fact file

From the 2016 African Digital Summit, Seychelles has the highest percentage of Facebook users than any country in Africa.  Medianet Tunisia puts Seychelles first in Africa with around 56% of its population using the popular social media site whereas Tunisia came second with 55% followed by Mauritius with 49%.

“Facebook has more than 1.94 billion monthly active users as of March 31, 2017.^[11] As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, based on the number of active user accounts.^[12] Facebook classifies users from the ages of 13 to 18 as minors and therefore sets their profiles to share content with friends only.” Source Wikipedia.