Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro drives positive teen social media debate

The Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro, led by its 25th President, Rotarian Emeka Nwosu, brought secondary school students together at BWC Hotels on Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, for an interschool debate examining one of the defining questions confronting young Nigerians: whether social media represents a danger or an opportunity for the Nigerian teenager.

Organised as part of the club’s Basic Education and Literacy Programme, the debate placed young people at the centre of a conversation that adults, educators, technology companies and regulators have increasingly struggled to resolve.

The topic, “Social Media and the Nigerian Teenager: A Danger or Opportunity?”, was deliberately broad enough to require students to confront both sides of digital life, from learning, creativity and entrepreneurship to cyberbullying, misinformation, privacy breaches and potentially harmful interactions.

The debate also continued a programme that has become an important part of the Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro’s education calendar.

In September 2025, the club gathered students from five Lagos secondary schools at the same BWC Hotels venue to debate whether artificial intelligence would improve humanity’s future or put it at risk. More than 30 students and about a dozen teachers attended that edition, according to contemporaneous reports.

Ireti Senior Grammar School emerged first in the 2025 competition and received ₦500,000, while Girls Senior Secondary Grammar School received ₦400,000 for second place and Holy Child College received ₦300,000 for third. King’s College and Government Senior College received ₦200,000 each for fourth and fifth positions respectively. Students and teachers also received individual cash rewards.

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That history gives the 2026 edition a wider significance. Rather than treating debating simply as a contest of eloquence, the club has increasingly used the platform to ask students to interrogate technologies already reshaping their lives.

The choice of social media as this year’s subject is particularly timely.

The Nigerian Communications Commission says the internet provides children with valuable opportunities to learn, communicate, create and develop digital skills, but also exposes them to cyberbullying, inappropriate material, scams, privacy violations and potentially harmful contact with strangers. In guidance published in August 2026, the regulator stressed that protecting children should not mean excluding them from technology, but helping them become informed and responsible digital citizens.

That balanced position closely mirrors the central question posed to the young debaters.

An NCC study involving Nigerian children aged four to 16 similarly acknowledges the enormous educational and social benefits of digital technology while warning that internet access can provide a route for cybercrime and other harms. The study argues for a pragmatic balance between access to beneficial digital resources and protecting children from risk.

UNICEF Nigeria also identifies cyberbullying, privacy concerns and exposure to inappropriate content among the challenges facing children and adolescents online, while emphasising responsible use rather than simply shutting young people out of digital spaces.

There is a further Nigerian dimension to the discussion. UNICEF’s 2024 Situation Analysis of Children and Adolescents in Nigeria points to disparities in digital access and skills. Citing the 2020 National Youth Survey, the report said computer literacy stood at 54 per cent among males and 46 per cent among females, with substantial regional differences among girls.

The opportunity side of the argument is therefore substantial. For teenagers with meaningful access and the right skills, social media and the wider digital environment can provide routes into education, information, creative expression, professional networks and entrepreneurship.

The danger is equally difficult to dismiss. UNICEF and the NCC have both highlighted concerns around privacy, cyberbullying, harmful content and unsafe contact, making digital literacy and responsible behaviour increasingly important alongside access itself.

For Nwosu, the debate comes at the beginning of his tenure as president of a club that has identified education and youth empowerment among the priorities for its 2026 to 2027 Rotary year. Nwosu, a health, safety and risk management professional with more than two decades of experience, was recently installed as the club’s 25th president.

Speaking at Nwosu’s investiture, Immediate Past President Rotarian Alexander Chukwu described the incoming president as “a team player” and expressed confidence that the club would work collectively under the new leadership.

The debate also sits within a busy education programme for the club. Under Nwosu’s leadership, Rotary Ikoyi Metro scheduled a four-day vision and hearing screening for Primary One pupils from 10 Lagos Island public primary schools from September 22 to 25 under a Rotary International Global Grant project. The intervention was designed to identify children whose learning might be affected by undetected sensory difficulties.

The club entered the new Rotary year with considerable momentum. Its work during Alexander Chukwu’s 2025 to 2026 presidency included the previous interschool debate, healthcare interventions and economic empowerment projects, and the club was subsequently recognised as Overall Best Club in Rotary International District 9112.

The 2026 Rotary Ikoyi Metro teen social media debate therefore extends a broader approach to education that goes beyond providing material support. It asks young people to reason, research, defend ideas and listen to opposing arguments on subjects that directly affect their generation.

The social media question offers no simple binary answer. The same technology that can expose a teenager to bullying or misinformation can provide another teenager with a classroom, audience, community or first business opportunity.

That tension is precisely what makes the debate powerful.

By putting the arguments into the hands of teenagers themselves, the Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro is creating room for young Nigerians not merely to be warned about the digital world, but to examine it critically and articulate the kind of relationship they want to have with it.

For a generation growing up with the internet woven into everyday life, that capacity to distinguish opportunity from danger may ultimately prove as valuable as winning the debate itself.

Freelanews

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