International Needs Ghana (INGH), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) with focus on transforming lives and changing communities has called on parents to be vigilant and monitor activities of adolescents on the internet to safeguard their safety.

Ms. Rita Abla Dugbenu, Project Officer, INGH, said there was the need for parenting skills, which needed to be enforced while arriving at new forms of guiding children in the wake of technological advancement.

She said this at a capacity building workshop for state agencies to end adolescent pregnancies in the Afadzato South and North Dayi Districts in Kpando.
The workshop formed part of the Organisation's Safe and Protective Environment for Adolescent Development (SPREAD) project to promote a safe environment for adolescent boys and girls that will prevent and reduce adolescent pregnancies, abuse and exploitation at the community levels.

She noted that access of adolescent boys and girls to the internet exposed them to materials that could jeopardize their future, hence they needed parental supervision to prevent them from becoming vulnerable.

Ms. Dugbenu said parents should ensure that materials their children accessed on the internet were educative and would enhance their growth, saying, advertisements could be disabled or restricted.

The Project Officer urged adolescents to desist from accepting requests from unfamiliar accounts and engaging online challenges, desist from posting sensitive information and seeking financial help on the internet, which could expose them.

She called on government to adequately equip decentralized agencies and departments to effectively educate adolescents.
Mr Israel Akrobortu, Volta Regional Director, Department of Children at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection told the GNA that a worrying trend was online violence, which must be curbed.

The Director called on the National Media Commission (NMC) to regulate contents on television because some contents were not good for adolescents.
The SPREAD project is being carried out in 55 communities in eleven Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in three regions with the aim of targeting 7,000 girls, 4,000 boys and 16,500 community members to end adolescent pregnancies in the selected communities.