South Africa leads the list of the top ten countries with the highest amount of time spent on social media. Children today are growing up immersed in a digital world that is taking a toll on their mental health. Childhood is increasingly phone-obsessed, with children having access to the social media behemoths of Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, and there is growing concern regarding the overuse of screens and digital platforms among children.

Sean Parker, Facebook’s former president, explains that social media is “a cycle designed for profit, but at the cost of our attention, wellbeing, and sometimes even our mental health… it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Paper by the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Parliamentary Liaison Office