Ibrahim Kolawole Samuel, Founder of Date360Blog and Naijablogger has shared his thoughts on the Impacts of Digital Media Education on the new generation of Nigerian youths and how the knowledge can guide them in future career paths.

“Over the last decade, Digital media has played a significant role in redefining the world economy and has created more work opportunities for the youths in the society. This industry is expanding across the world and Nigeria haven’t quite grasped the way to input this into the education system effectively.” Samuel said.

He continued that, “Some aspects of digital media that can be taught to secondary students include – Basic concepts of digital media, Simple aspects of design, Business of Digital media, Careers in Digital media, Blogging.”

Ibrahim Kolawole Samuel who holds a B. Tech in computer science from LAUTECH and a master’s degree in Applied Digital Media from Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland, says, “While a lot of parents are trying to prevent their kids from accessing the media space, they should realise that new media is embedded in our daily lives and we cannot escape it, rather we should embrace it and teach kids how to properly use these platforms.

Himself as an example, he said, ”I started blogging in 2008 while awaiting my WAEC results and I continued while in university and within a decade, the platform has grown to over a million followers reaching over 20 million users monthly, thereby creating a sustainable income”.

Impact of Digital Media Education in Nigeria.

Reducing Internet Fraud: Since the coming of the Internet, a lot of Nigerian youths have taken to the illicit trade called Internet scam or Yahoo-Yahoo. I believe with proper knowledge and education from professionals, we can reduce the number of youths going into this illicit trade and change the mind of the new generation youths – Exposing them to other monetisation opportunities within the digital media space.

Reducing Unemployment: Unemployment is a major problem in Nigeria, and this has increased over the years thereby causing a lot of negative effects for both the individuals and the society. The knowledge of digital media can help reduce the rate of unemployment among the youths in the country, Nigerian youths have the capability to learn and adopt new changes with the growing technology pace in the country and around the world, and with proper knowledge in our schools, we can shape kids up with digital media skills. The endless opportunities are there to be tapped from, but we need to guide the kids. Nowadays most digital media schools are too
expensive for the common man, so digital media knowledge has been a thing for the upper and middle class in the Nigerian society, Therefore, I implore the government to step in and input this into the Nigerian education system.

Possible Future Directions

A syllabus needs to be created for ‘Digital Media’ in our secondary schools and competent teachers should be employed to teach the students – This will help shape up the mind of these kids and expose them to more career opportunities on these platforms, rather than waste so much time on these platforms doing nothing beneficial, as they move to higher institutions.