Carmona warns students of social media risks

President Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona, has urged Form One students at Holy Faith Convent, Penal to be careful about their posts on social media platforms such as Facebook as posts are never deleted from cyberspace and can be used by both local and foreign universities when assessing new students.

Carmona, who presented the school with an official Presidential portrait, a picture of Pope Francis and a national flag, visited each of the 23 classes where he engaged the students in discussion about their life at the school.

But it was at the Form 1 H class where he told the students, who had just entered the secondary school system after passing the SEA examinations, to hold onto their values of hard work, love, discipline and order saying these values tend to be eroded while in secondary school. He said while social media and the internet could be both additions to their studies at times they offer an outlet into a dangerous world where adults could be seen “misbehaving in a terrible way.’

He said they should instead become child advocates who had the power to change the world and once against exhorted them to be careful about their posts on social media.

“Whatever you post on Facebook is there forever and some universities look at your Facebook page when considering your admission to their university,” he said.

The President also advised them to listen to their teachers whenever corrected adding that this was not done because they “do not like you but because they want you to go further.” Earlier, after presenting the picture of Pope Francis to school principal, Sharon Francois, he recalled that during his visit to the Vatican he had intended to ask the Pope to offer prayers for him but “he beat me to it and told me- pray for him.”

“So I got a little worried there because I internalised, if he has a direct line to the man upstairs and he is asking me to pray for him, I have to be worried, but I recognised that as the humility of the man,” Carmona said.