vulnerability due to their special conditions such as age and level of education or consciousness.
The increasingly popular and accessible social media thanks to the current technological advancement that has been recorded in recent years and the fact that practically every one can have easy access to smart phones that are affordable and easily used, information travels from one end of the world to another in real time.
Any event that takes place in one corner of the world can be seen and shared with millions immediately thanks to the social media such as facebook, twitter and instagram, among others.
The social media are having more and more influence in making up the psyche of people and in recent years have immensely contributed to a certain way of thinking particularly among youths.
Terrorists, fanatics, and all forms of fundamentalists and ideologists have found fertile ground in disseminating the kind of information they want to by using these social media.
True, by themselves, social media are harmless or rather they could be used to share valuable information and knowledge from those who have it or have made deep researches in to those who do not have access to such knowledge.
Information about a certain event or a certain story could very easily be shared with others, very distant and are used by all. They can save lives and suffering and contribute to the enrichment of a certain society in general. They can be used to promote wellbeing and justice as well.
By the same token however, social media can also be abused by disseminating false or exaggerated information about a certain event and most dangerously they can be used to disseminate poisonous messages that can easily create animosities and enmity or grudges among a certain population against another one.
Unscrupulous people or those with evil intents can use them to incite violence among communities so that hatred is spread and peace and stability are disrupted. And for those who want to fish in troubled waters, it becomes their big party. They can take full advantage of the situation.
In the speech that the Ethiopian Prime Minister made at the UN, he underlined that such state of affairs has been a sort of concern in his country as well mentioning that in recent days where there has been some social unrest in certain parts of the country, the principal cause has been the abuse of social media by certain enemies of the people who tried to hijack what could have been legitimate social questions to political gains of enemies of the country.
The social media were systematically abused by disseminating false or at best exaggerated accounts and made up stories inciting people one against another, putting more fuel on the fire and creating as much chaos as they could.
The Prime Minister also stated that there are some countries who have good relations with Ethiopia but at the same time are doing nothing when these elements reside in their countries safely and try to kindle a fire that eventually no one may be able to extinguish.
He was suggesting that this could not be underestimated and let to continue undisturbed. People who have no responsibilities to any one may post anything on these social media but the consequences could be disastrous.
No reasonable human being would like his or her country to be reduced as some such as Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others. What is happening there is right in front of our eyes every day.
No one wants to risk their individual and collective security and safety due to the dissemination of extremist ideas and ideologies and the radicalization of even youths from western countries who relatively are better off than any one of their peers in any other developing countries of the third world.
No one wants to live in fear and alarm in their day to day life as more and more unexpected bombings and suicide attacks take place in practically every corner of the world.
At present, one can safely assert that no nation is completely immune from the threats of terrorist attacks and one of the fundamental sources of these messengers of death such as ISIS and al Qaeda or al Shabaab are also the social networks that are constantly abused to disseminate their poisonous and unfounded truths and made up footages.
The alarm should be shared by all responsible citizens and a call for reason and caution must be made because if it gets too late, it becomes incurable and generates only deaths and destruction.
Can we afford to let this happen? Absolutely not! We should beware of social media and take all the necessary caution before falling in the same basket as those who wish us no good and want us to perish.
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