CARICOM leaders gathered at the “Regional Symposium on Violence as a Public Health Issue” are acknowledging the role social media has played in the exacerbation of violence in the Caribbean.
Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, in his contribution to the Leaders Round Table pointed to two major issues—guns and social media.
Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, said studies have revealed that increased time on social media showed a marked increase in mental illness among users.
Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Dr Terrance Drew, who disclosed that he has studied violence extensively said:
“Social media can become an excellent conduit to transmit violence; and people are using it.”
According to Dr Drew, social media is the conduit for the agent, which is violence, and then there were those who are susceptible people in the community for different reasons, like family problems, and trauma when they are young.
“All you need now is to transmit the agent, which is the violence to the susceptible, and social media is giving you a great medium in which to transmit violence from here to over here to the susceptible who are probably using the phone, the tablet, on Facebook, and so forth,” Dr Drew noted.
The St Kitts and Nevis PM said social media can be misused and abused and become a medium of transmission of violence from a host to a susceptible medium.
“I think we have not dealt with it and we need to deal with it,” Dr Drew said.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister of Grenada, Dickon Mitchell—one of the youngest leaders in the region—said social media can be used as a platform for good. He believes it should be used to encourage positive behaviour and reverse the cultural norm that it is okay to “resolve conflicts and ‘pull rank’ by being violent”.
“I think, therefore, what we have to spend time on is content development developed by young persons. And we can use the creative economy as one approach to do that… arts… music… to reengineer the behaviour of the next generation of Caribbean citizens to see that there are alternatives to resolving conflict,” PM Mitchell said.
He added: "I think if we spend the time there, we are more likely to be able to have that behavioural change."
