THE school shooting in Tacloban City reminds me of the resolutions we filed in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to make schools into peace zones. It is heartbreaking to see our sacred grounds invaded by firearms.
More so, as a Muslim mother of an 11-year-old, I always worry about internet addiction hijacking time for conversation. I see children as an amanah — a sacred trust placed in our hands by Allah. A trust is not merely fed and clothed. It is guarded. Just as we would not leave our children alone in a crowded marketplace, we cannot abandon them in the crowded bazaar of social media.
School safety and internet safety are now threads of the same cloth.
There was a time when parents worried only about the roads their children crossed on their way to school. We taught them to look left and right before stepping into traffic. We warned them not to speak to strangers. We reminded them to return home before dusk.
Today, however, our children travel roads we cannot see.
They walk daily through a vast digital city whose streets never sleep. Behind brightly colored icons and endless videos lie dark alleyways inhabited by bullies, predators, misinformation peddlers and algorithms that lure young minds deeper into an endless maze. The smartphone, once a mere tool, has become both lantern and labyrinth.
The wounds children carry into classrooms are often invisible. A cruel comment posted at midnight may echo louder than the morning bell. A humiliating video can become a stone tied to a child’s heart. Teachers increasingly encounter students burdened by anxieties born not in school corridors but in digital corridors.
Recognizing this changing landscape, Sen. Robinhood Padilla has introduced Senate Bill 601, or the Children’s Safety in Social Media Act.
The measure seeks to place protective railings along the digital highway. It requires social media platforms to establish age verification systems and secure parental consent for child users. It empowers parents to supervise accounts, impose screen-time limits and withdraw consent when necessary. The bill also seeks to curb addictive platform features such as autoplay, incessant notifications and reward mechanisms designed to keep children endlessly engaged.
Moreover, it mandates safeguards against inappropriate targeted advertising, restricts geolocation sharing, limits unauthorized purchases and requires accessible reporting systems for children’s concerns.
Critics may view regulation as a fence around freedom. Yet every loving parent knows that fences are not always prisons; sometimes they are safeguards around a garden while young plants are still taking root.
This measure is not about censorship. It is about stewardship.
Technology companies have become architects of the modern childhood. They therefore share responsibility for ensuring that the houses they build are not filled with hidden traps.
If childhood is a garden, then social media is now part of its soil. We must ensure that what nourishes our children are seeds of learning, compassion and truth — not weeds of harm and addiction.
The future is already in our children’s hands. The question is whether we have done enough to protect the hands that hold it.