Addicted to technology and social media
Date:
Channel: Navaid Aziz
File Size: 51.00MB
Episode Notes
Shaykh Navaid and Rahamatullah Siddique discuss
AI Generated Transcript ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah
wa stouffville when I was a builder Himanshu Rudy and fusina woman sejati Imani Anna Maria de la dama de la, da da da, da la la la junta de cada hoshana Mohammed Abu Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa seldom at the Sleeman kathira My bad, my dear brothers and sisters Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh
Mashallah, it feels like we're having to Juma. So actually, this is our third job of the day with all the people that showed up. So just like a McLaren, to all of you for coming out on this Friday night. I know it's cold, I know, you guys could have been doing a lot of things. So it means a lot that you guys are coming out to learn and share with us. So this is a continuation of our community discussion. So the format, as I'm went to, as I mentioned previously, is that we have a brief presentation. And after the brief presentation, we open it up not just for questions, but for comments and feedback, and particularly your experiences in this field. tonight's discussion is
about addiction to social media and technology, and what that exactly means. So now, why exactly did I want to choose this topic, at the end of last year of 2017, I went through like a bit of an online struggle, I'm going to leave it at that. But it was a very difficult time, it was a time where a lot of bad things were being said, where people weren't as nice eidetic, as I'd expect them to be, the whole concept of Muslim brotherhood and sisterhood and kulluk was completely out the window. And I found that it had a very profound effect upon me, there is something I took very, very personally. Now the outcome of that is, I made a conscious decision at that time, that I'm actually going to cut
off my time from social media not completely, because I know that's not going to be possible, but I'm going to minimize it as much as possible. Now, what I've learned from that experience, though, is that it's had a very profound effect, not only in terms of what I'm able to do throughout the day, in terms of the Buttercup in my time, but also in my psychological state. psychological state is such an important thing that you know, what's happening in our day and age is that to friends, family members can be sitting at the same table, yet no one is talking because everyone is on the phone, we've had to come up with such games, especially amongst friends, that if you go out to
dinner, everyone puts their phones in the middle, and the first person to touch their phone needs to pay for dinner. Like that's how bad the situation has gotten. Right. So that's how you know how you get a free meal that you know, especially if you're with one of your friends, you get another friend to like call them and text them so that they're forced to pick up their phone. That's how you get a free meal.
So that's why I personally wanted to discuss it just sharing my own experiences, share my own findings. And then I also thought, you know what, we need other perspectives as well. And that's something we're trying to do in this community discussion. So who would be the best person to talk about this issue? And I thought that none other than my good friend Rahmatullah Siddiq over here, he is the president of ownit Institute. He is very active in Calgary, very active with youth as well. So he does martial arts, he trains at at hope Academy on the weekends, Islamic Studies and leadership and other things as well. He's very active on social media. He actually taught me
something yesterday about social media that literally blew my mind. I was like, if people knew about this, they would stop using that particular app. So hopefully, he's going to be talking about that as well. Now, before we formally get into the discussion, I want to share one small statistic with you. And this was shared in the Calgary Herald on January 7, so not too long ago, Calgary Herald January 7, they released an article on the mental health decay of youth. And they're talking about how in the year 2017, just last year, in the Children's Hospital here in Calgary, there are 395 admissions for psychiatric help related to mental health. What does that mean? Exactly? What happens
a lot of the times is that if your guidance counselor at school refers you to the hospital, they will send you to the hospital, you'll go to the hospital, you'll get assessed, and nine out of 10 times usually, they're like it's not that severe an issue, go home, and we'll have a follow up with you. However, if you get admitted into the hospital, that means something is very serious, you might be suicidal, or you have suicidal behavior, or you have eating disorders related to you know, distress and anxiety, like anorexia and bulimia and, you know, psychological image and stuff like that. That was just in the Children's Hospital. You take the Children's Hospital away across the
other hospitals in Calgary 1100 1100. And this is for people under the age of 18. So amongst all the hospitals, we're looking at approximately 1500 people that are being admitted into institutes and you know, monitoring overnight, related to mental health issues and the
primary cause in most of these cases, was their usage of social media. So as you can see, it's a very important topic to talk about. So now with our guests tonight, Dr. matava, I want to pose this question to you, why do you feel it is such an important issue for us to talk about addiction of social media and technology? Well, sommelier comm everybody. First off, I want to thank you for having me tonight. I'm really looking forward to this discussion. So coming back to your question,
why is it important to talk about this topic? First things first, it's a very popular thing in today's world, if I don't think you can find a toddler who has not used the internet, or a cell phone or an iPad at some point in their first four years of life. So it is it is something that every single person in the society is faced with. And it's, it's, it's what I like to look at is like, it's a tool. And like with any tool, any power tool, there's goods and Bad's, okay, you can hurt yourself with it. And you can use it to get some very good stuff done. So I'm going to be talking tonight about the negatives and positives about that. But to begin with, I want to look at
this whole topic from the top here and say, you know, social media, the internet devices, they can be used for goodness, they can be used for a lot of good things. And just some examples of that is look at how much information is available to us look at how much information is available to our children. Also, when we need to get the word out about something when we need to spread something good, of course, no bad spreading here. When we need to spread something good, the internet is a powerful tool. I mean, I was one of the last generations probably who remembers if we had to call our friends, we have to pick up the landline call their parents and be like, Hi, can we talk to so
and so and leave a message on the answering machine or something like that. But now you can instantly connect with people, you can connect with your family members overseas, you can connect with your loved ones who aren't home instantly, because we have cell phones, we have FaceTime, we have all these new technologies. But like every tool in this world, there are goods and Bad's. So for the remaining of the night, I'm gonna pass it to the reading. The second I want you to think of the encyclopedia for a lot of the stuff I'm talking about, who hears remembers the Britannica encyclopedia set, and probably the older generation here. Remember, when we used to go pick up those
published books, we used to open up that crisp page, and we used to find whatever information we want it. Now the Britannica encyclopedia sets, or any encyclopedia for that matter was never a scholarly source for information, it was a collection of information for us to use moving forward in our lives, the internet is the exact same way. So I'm going to leave it on that point. And I'm going to pass it back to the read. And I think we're going to start with the dangers of social media.
We are currently living in an age that is known as the digital age. And they qualify this, that's insane around 2006, around 2007, there was a drastic change that took place. And that was that is what amatola is referring to that it is the last age that possibly grew up without having to, you know, go through the internet, per se. And Around this time, this change that took place was in terms of the way we learn. So I want you to look at this statistic. children that are aged zero to two are now learning how to swipe on the screen, more than the art of learning how to walk by 54%. So young child zero to two is more likely to learn how to swipe on the screen left to right and
right to left, when they are able to learn to walk. And this goes even older. If you get older, from three to five, you'll see that they're learning how to use this technology even better than their parents, right. Young children are learning how to code now even and this is becoming part of their day to day activity. Now for the danger aspect. You know, a lot of us when we talk about the dangers of the internet, we talked about being groomed by elders, we talk about being exposed to things that you don't want to look at. But we don't really talk about the psychological ramifications that this has on young people. And they've developed something a psychological term called FOMO, which is fear
of missing out. And what's this done, what this has done to young children is created a sense of anxiety, where they feel that if they're disconnected from their device, they're going to miss out on the next big thing, whether it's something that's happening amongst their sort of famous celebrities, something that's happening in sports, something that's happening amongst their friends and peers, that they're snapping something alive, and they're like, Oh my God, if I'm not connected right now, I'm going to miss out on this. Now what does this do? Number one, it creates a lack of sleep. And this is why when we're talking about tips later on, then one of the number one tips after
a help of Allah subhana wa tada is that you have to separate yourself from your device. Meaning at nighttime, there has to be a time where you charge your phone away from your room, leave it on a different floor, leave it in a different room, just so that you're not doing
distracted by it. Have you ever noticed that now before you go to bed, you actually have a much tougher time falling asleep. And this ties into a concept of blue light, that there's blue light in particular, that makes it very, very difficult for you to fall asleep. And not last year, but the year before Apple and Samsung released, you know, updates onto the phone, where it takes away the blue light, so that it's still safe for you to use your phone as you're falling asleep. But just think about that the last thing you're thinking about, as you're falling asleep is not bismack Allahumma emotiva. Here, it's okay, what happened to the Kardashians, and then you end up getting
all these like messed up dreams. And you're like, Hey, I wonder what this dream means. It doesn't mean anything. It's our addiction to technology and social media. So that's the first ramification that it has. Number two, is in terms of the things that we are exposed to in terms of becoming happy and sad. So growing up, as we grow older, at least, one of the things we will genuinely Miss is getting a hug from your mother or father. And that's an experience of contact that cannot be replaced by anything, no matter what you do, there's nothing that's going to replace that. And that is why as we get older, we cherish our parents more. And if they passed away, may Allah have mercy
upon them, you know, we feel as if we're missing out on something. But what's happening in those born in this digital age, they found something completely to replace it. So referring back to this article in the Calgary Herald, it mentions that people in this digital age no longer care about physical contact, you can no longer comfort them, that, hey, I will give you a hug, and this will comfort you and soothe you. But what they find comforting and soothing in now is if they get a like on a Facebook post, if someone retweets their tweet, if someone likes their picture on Instagram, and it creates a drug in the mind, that is the equivalent of literally like crack and cocaine, that
is the experience that is created. So that if they're not getting access to it, they start getting withdrawal symptoms. Have you seen how powerful of a thing it is to tell your child to punish them, Hey, I'm going to take away your phone, or your tablet away from you. Let us understand that we're punishing our children, punishing our youth, by taking away these things from them, when this is something that didn't even exist in our times, is equivalent of telling someone now I would take away food and water from you. And they'd rather have food and water taken away, I will be patient or not having food and water, but I need my device to be connected with. Right. So that is the second
element of it in terms of psychological and mental health. The third element of it now is in terms of things that we get exposed to things that we get exposed to, and the things that others get exposed to through us. What exactly does this mean? So there is this huge culture of downloading free stuff, meaning you're getting copyrighted material off the internet, whether it be movies, whether it be TV shows, whether it be books, you know, for those of you that have been connected recently, that book about Donald Trump has made its rounds like on WhatsApp, I've had it sent to me at least like five or six times, and I'm sure a lot of you have as well. But that's copyrighted
material. Now, people will understand the psychology behind copyrighted material. One, no one likes to pay for stuff. So if they can get it for free, they will pay that they will avoid paying for it. But number two, because of the design of wanting everything right here, right now, they understand that we can implant viruses into those documents into those video clips into other things, so that it will have an impact on the person that is downloading them. So what ends up happening is three of the most common things, number one, a random access tool. And that is remote webcam access. So what that means that you download this clip, you download this file, then all of a sudden by you
downloading it, you've granted permission to this server to this host of people that will get access to your webcam, and you will not even realize it. They will be taking videos, they will be taking pictures, and you're getting exposed. And you don't even know about it, particularly for our sisters, particularly for our youth, that sin isn't a nightmare and a disaster, right? Everything could potentially be recorded. And you're getting exposed to that just do this file. Number two is crypto lock. And that is where your personal files on your computer will be locked out until you pay a ransom until you pay a ransom. And this is serious stuff. It's not like small amounts. And they
will, you know, target rich people in particular, that if you have any money because they're going to be able to see all of your files, all of your data, how much money you have, and they will extort you, and they're behind such servers and such you know, different IP addresses and other things where it's so encrypted, that you can't even track them that even the police has a tough time doing
anything about it. So the only way you can get access to again, is if you pay that ransom. And then the third thing is the keylogger. And this is the most common one, out of all of them that it is on almost on. If you have like a PC and not a Mac, you're almost guaranteed exposed to this, because the most common virus on the PC is the keylogger, where they implant software onto your computer that logs all of your keystrokes. So when you go to your bank website, and you're logging in information on that website, everything you log in, is being logged into this software, and is getting shared somewhere else. And this is the most common way of identity theft, the most common
way of identity theft. So all of the stuff that we're downloading through technology, all the stuff that we're exposing ourselves to is in fact exposing us to more stuff to more dangerous things. And we're not even realizing it. And then the last thing I want to comment on before I pass it over is the issue of just being exposed to hot on things in Allah subhanaw taala. In the Quran, he gives us very clear guidelines that tell the believing men and the believing women to lower from their gaze, meaning that as a believer, we're not meant to expose ourselves to anything and everything. But rather, we need to be very, very careful of the things that we expose ourselves to. Now the
unfortunate reality is that through social media and through this downloading system, we're exposing ourselves to very, very bad things. So now let's do something very competitive. There is a famous poem of Amanda Sheffield himolla, where he once accidentally saw the ankle of a woman and he complains to alakea. He says Shaco, Wilkie and Sue are heavily for uncertainty latoken mahasi were called Le in the neuro neuro la de la la see that I complained to work here of a lapse in my memory, and he guided me to leaving off since. And he said to me indeed, knowledge is the light of Allah subhanho wa Taala. And the light of Allah is not given to someone that commit sins. And this is not
even a sin, he accidentally saw the angle of a woman she's walking by the wind blow or by flew up. And he saw her ankle and all of a sudden, it has this impact. Now I want you to imagine a young teenager that is not married is going through the pfitzner of life. And he's getting exposed to this, you know, abnormal interaction virtually constantly bombarded with it. And this is like the the fitting of our times, particularly I'm going to be talking about Instagram later on. In Instagram, if you just look at one particular video or one particular picture, it develops an algorithm for your viewer monitoring, but what you view and monitor regularly, and then you'll
notice all of a sudden, your general feed is filled with videos and pictures of like of stuff like that. So if you accidentally, not even intentionally, Marcella, you know, we're all innocent and good people here tonight, if we accidentally look at something for like more than a second, Instagram is picking up on that and will continuously expose you to it. until you find a way to make Toba, Nick, please get this away. And then you have to delete your history, and then it'll re develop a new algorithm for you. So that's just to Instagram Same thing with in with Facebook, same thing with other programs as well. So we have a very big obligation in terms of the things that we
implant in our minds, because it goes to our hearts and becomes our thoughts and becomes a distraction for us. So now it's no longer about, you know, protecting our memories like Amanda Shakira himolla was talking about, but now it's about protecting our morality, it's about protecting our own desires, desires go out in rage, when people no longer control what they expose themselves to. And for everyone, whether young or old is just as equally as applicable. We have to keep ourselves in check. And that is the third biggest danger that we expose ourselves to Allahu taala. And I'll now pass it over to Mottola who will be talking about some of the other dangers in sha
Allah. Okay, so I'm going to start with the simplest of simple here. Naveed spoke about children and how it's having effect on their development and whatnot. Now, as he mentioned in the beginning, I am a I am a martial arts instructor for the City of Calgary. I've taught hundreds of children over the past. I don't know how many years. And I see this. And now what I see is I'm going to get everybody who wants to participate in this to try this. I want everybody to take their hand and point to that corner.
Pretty simple right? Now, when I'm teaching kids who I can see have had a long dependence on using a device Now when I say alone dependence I mean, they come before class, they're sitting watching a video. And after class, they pick up the phone and they're walking down the steps watching that same video. I see them in the malls and they're playing a game on their phone, as we mentioned the swiping how they know how to swipe. When I'm teaching these kids basic motor skills, they don't have any. What I made you guys do by pointing to that corner, if I were to talk to
About 90% of the kids I have dealt with. And I say I want to point I want you to point both your big toes to that corner in the room, they give me the biggest puzzled look on their face, I will say, lift up one of your legs, and put your other hand in the air, they will not know what to do. I will say I want you to turn around.
They give you this puzzled look, because they are not used to, frankly, running outside falling in the dirt and crying about the scraped knee that they just got, okay. They're so used to their technology. Now, you're going to think, How does he know this is not just the kids, I have had kids who have come to me who have come from strong households that do not allow social, not social media technology use for extended periods of time. And because I've had I talked to their parents on a regular basis and whatnot. These are the kids that they say we make our kids go out and play. We make our kids play catch, we make our kids play basketball. And you will see the motor skills of
these children are significantly different. Also, I look at the demographics of the children, I'm teaching those kids who are from, you know, poverty level below poverty level, their parents can't afford these expensive devices, their parents can't afford an iPad dedicated to the child. And you will see these kids, they'll be naughty. Yes, there'll be naughty, all kids will be naughty. I'm not saying a single kid is not naughty, they have to be kids. But you will see the children that do not have access to these devices, they will have more motor skills, they'll be able to kick a ball in front of them. But the ones who are more dependent on I'm leaving class, I'm going to pick up my
iPhone again, or I'm going to pick up that iPad again. You literally I kid you not it for the simple as a test pointing to a corner bending. If I tell them bend your knees, if I tell them run to the next wall and come back, they look at you with a with a stare. And they're like, we don't know what that means. Which I think is troubling. So moving up the age, age spectrum here, I'm going to move into alter egos. So as people start developing now, as we mentioned, I'm an active user of social media, cellphones, everything. So I'm not trying to say I don't do this, that would be very hypocritical of me. But the fact is, is there has to be limits in place. So we see alter egos, we
see separate lives and see bullying. Now we're going to start with this alter egos. There are people there are children, there are youth, there are adults even living a completely separate life in the digital world. When I say this, they create their little emoji for those who of you who don't know any emoji, it's literally like a cartoon character of yourself. And they live in a digital world. They take this cartoon and they go buy groceries with the cartoon all from sitting on their, on their phones, and nothing is real. It's all hype. It's all fake. It's all made up. It's in this world of the Sims. Everybody remembers the Sims, especially from our generation. That was the first
big first big thing. And people live these alter lives. In addition, they will live very differently behind the screen than they will in real life. Communication Skills start to decrease the ability to talk to somebody face to face, who here actually call somebody on the phone more than they text them. Think about that for an answer. Well, good. I'm happy with that one. But it's so much easier to text our friends. Now, sometimes phone calls are almost awkward. You pick up the phone, like when the vehicles are like, Hey, he's like, hey, and I'm like, Okay. Right. And that's where it kind of ends, right? So we see communication skills start to decrease, we see communication skills. When I
tell the kids that I work with I'm like, Listen, we need to pick up a pen and write a letter. They're just like, what, why can't we type it.
And I'm just like, because you need to learn how to write and you will see that they don't like using pens, papers and all this kind of stuff. But we need to develop that communication in them. It's a huge building, boy autocorrect building point. autocorrect has ruined everybody's life. Let's face it, we can spell anything wrong, and it'll automatically corrected. It also creates very awkward situations when it corrects up to something you don't want it to say. Okay, so we need to start seeing what this is doing to the development of youth and bullying. Bullying is huge. Everybody growing up, we've all dealt with bullying. We've all dealt with that kid who used to take
away our lunch or recess snack. We've all dealt with that kid who would take the basketball away from us. But the fact is, is that social media, cell phones, all this type of thing has blown bullying to a new level. I'll give you an example. I'm not going to name names or anything of this. I was working with the Calgary police one day at a school here in Calgary. There is a large immigrant population. And I was sitting in the constables office and he was like I just dealt with a very disturbing problem and it's something that we see on a regular basis. And I said
What is just like this girl with a scarf, I believe she was with a skirt was beat up, they ripped off her clothes, they took pictures of her. And within seconds, the whole class had those pictures.
So
I'm sitting there in shock going, you know, back in our day, they'd have to mail a picture of me somewhere, right by postal services. But now instantaneously, we're getting stuff across. So bullying, bullying is huge. Cyber Bullying is a whole new world. Instead of people having to pull kids aside and threaten them, they're sending the messages on the instant basis here, every second, they're saying, we're gonna come beat you up, we're gonna come find you. But it's no longer waiting for that delay. It's instantly so imagine what that is doing the children's minds what it's what what fear they're living in.
Moving on to my next example, now, I talked in the beginning, about how the internet can be a positive and negative tool. And you guys are hearing so many negatives right now. But I promise you at the end of the program, you're gonna hear a bunch of positive stuff, a bunch of ways to protect yourself. But
I talked about how a negative tool who remembers the big floods that we're having happening in the states last year, remember, all the states were getting flooded and whatnot. Now I bring this up, because there was one example I wanted to talk about on Facebook, there is a video of a storm, okay, from Florida. And it was literally a house getting washed away, waves coming in people running on rooftops, all this kind of stuff. And everybody, this video got shared within the first couple hours, 15,000 times saying, Holy moly, look what's happening in Florida right now. And it said on the top live feed, and it was running, the clock was running for about 23 hours. The fact of the
matter is, is this video that got shared 15,000 times within a couple hours was from five years ago, it wasn't live. And it was from Hurricane Sandy or something. So this shows how quickly like I talked about the encyclopedia, it's a place for information, the internet will be a place for information. But what is the credibility that information? And we see this the flood video was just a simple example, you know, saying how things can spread. Now if we look at this from an Islamic point of view, think about how quickly something incorrect about our religion can be spread on the internet. And this happens every hour, if not every 10 minutes, I have read so called fatwas on the
internet that have no make no sense. But the sites are built in such amazing ways that they look credible. And everybody's like, Oh, it's on the internet. It must be right. When I did the counterterrorism training with national security of Canada, and the RCMP, they showed us the material that ISIS was spreading. They showed us the magazines, they showed us the online sites. And I'm telling you, it's scary how real incredible this information looks. So the internet and social media and now I'm talking mainly about the internet, back in my day, when we had dial up internet, you know, we have to wait 15 minutes for it to connect, and it took 20 minutes to load up a web
page. But now all this information I'm talking about is available right here in this budget.
Within a couple seconds, you can find it. So we have to look at these dangers in a very important way.
And I'm gonna pass it back to the V now we're gonna start moving to things. One more thing I want to touch, talk about this, he talked about blue lights, it is a big thing. And I challenge all of you to do this for those of you who do not use the blue light filters on their phones tonight, or maybe tomorrow, maybe the weekend start using the blue light filters from about eight o'clock. And you will notice a completely different sleep pattern. Blue Light is destroying our ability to sleep our ability to fall asleep because it keeps our brain awake. And I remember back in the day with CRT TVs, those TVs that were really big for the young kids, you probably haven't seen very many of
these, but they used to say don't stand too close to the TV, your eyes will get ruined. And it was a fact because of the radiation. Now we buy VR headsets and we strap our phone this close to our face. And everybody's seen it. So something to think about. I'm going to pass it back to the beat now. So this is the last section on dangerous before we start talking about practical add vise. So here's a question for all of you. There was a survey done in the Middle East and in certain parts of Europe. What is the most popular game played by Middle Eastern young men? What do you guys think the answer was
soccer. Without it. It wasn't there was like no second, literally it was FIFA. FIFA was the number one game that was played. Now you compare that into North America. And the number one game that was played were games like Call of Duty and Halo depending on on time, the time that the survey was done. Now, for those of you that grew up playing Nintendo Super Nintendo, if you remember Sega
You remember Atari were really old now, right? Things have changed drastically, what not only are you playing with members of your own household sitting next to you, but you connected to the to the Internet, and you can play with people in different parts of the world, you will have no face to face interaction with, but you're competitively playing with them. Now, the good part about this is that you get exposed to different people of different cultures, you hear about different ways of life. But obviously, with every good also comes with that bad. What is the bad that potentially comes out of this, I will share just one incident with you guys from the United Kingdom. And this is
the story of a young boy, Breck breadwinner, 14 years old. And he was playing Call of Duty day and night spending hours upon hours. And his mom was always worried that he's spending too much time. But she was never afraid of what happened next. What happened next was that he met a young man, Louis Danes, aged 19. He's 19 years old. And as you're spending more time, the time is increasing, like not just one or two hours a day. They're playing Call of Duty, like 10 hours a day. So among the security, she's like, Who are you playing with? Like, who is this guy that's become your best friend that you've never even met? Like, literally, you know, she goes to bed at night, she wakes up
in the morning, her son is still playing this game with the exact same person. So she gets a bit suspicious. She goes online, Louis Dean's and she starts seeing that, hey, there's a sexual predator by the name of Louis Danes, but no information is given about him. And there's a picture there, but she has no way of verifying is that the same person. So she calls the police, and she tells the police Hey, my son is in contact with this guy, Louis Danes, you know, online, I've seen that he's a sexual predator. But I want to verify that. Is there anything I have to be worried about? The police gave her the answer. Oh, grooming gangs only take place amongst women, you're, you're you have a
boy, don't worry, nothing's going to happen. Well, guess what end up happening? after a couple of months. Lewis says, Hey, why don't you come over to my house. And we can meet for the first time. They met for the first time, he was raped, and he was killed. And this happened just by playing a video game on line. So a lot of times parents think that you know what, video games are fine, it's not as if they want to be talking to other people, you're completely wrong, games have completely changed, you have access to people that you would never want your kids to come close to. Right. And this is not only about the issue of the time that they're spending playing these video games, but
they're getting introduced a very deranged individuals. So it's very important to monitor that. The last thing I wanted to talk about before we get into the advice section in sha Allah is the issue of Instagram. I said, I will be speaking about this a bit more. So I already spoke about how people want likes. And Alice already spoke about how the things that you even view for a couple of seconds, they develop individual algorithms for all of us, based upon what we're viewing. Which leads us to point number three, that at Islamic school when I was interacting with a young group of girls, I asked them hey, so what do you want to be when you grow up? Right back in the day you asked a young
lady, what do you want to be when you grow up? Oh, I would like to be a teacher. I would like to be a nurse. I would like to be a mother and a homemaker. This time, it was like unanimous consensus. I want to be an online influencer. And I was like what on earth is an online influencer till you realize that it's something again related to Instagram, where they will go into makeup, they will go into athletics, they will even go into like, I don't know what the word I'm looking for. But just basically showing off their body. That's what it is. And then they develop followings. And then product companies will contact them and say, Hey, can you advertise our product for us in your
pictures? And in your videos? And we will pay you for this? And I thought to myself surprised a lot. How is this happening to our community on our own eyes, and no one is paying attention to this at all. And this leads us to a second problem, particularly with the sisters, that when you look at Instagram in particular, what is unique to Instagram, as opposed to all of the other social media is that Instagram only shows you good news. It will show you people having good time on the beach, someone eating some amazing food, someone enjoying their life on their vacation, and it only shows you good stuff. And then when people share pictures of themselves, seldom extremely seldom does
anyone shared genuine pictures of themselves. Either they've been putting makeup on for the last three hours, or those pictures are actually photoshopped. Those pictures are actually photoshopped. And then young women look at this. And they're like, wow, that person's life is so amazing. I wish my life could be like that. This girl looks so amazing. I wish I could look like that. And what it ends up doing is that it develops this
image of everyone's life is so amazing. My life is so terrible. My parents don't understand me. My friends are losers. Nothing is good in my city. You know what, I've completely unhappy, and you end up doing crazy things. So it develops this perception of reality that is so fake. That if you think about it, you know, I'll give me a very simple example. One of the people that got trolled very recently, online, was Kendall Jenner, Kendall Jenner. She's one of the Kardashian women. She got trolled online, because some pictures showed her where she had pimples. And they're like, how is this beauty model, you know, a going to some fancy party where she has pimples, and they're trolling
her online for that. And this shows is the type of mentality that's been created online, where this whole image of perfection is being portrayed. And no one wants to be real, this goes back to the alter ego that he was talking about. And this is a huge danger to our young women, it will affect their self image psychology, the way they see themselves, it will affect their confidence. And it's also affecting the way they view their own future. I mean, with all due respect, I'm sure there's some great online influencers that are doing some genuinely good things. But the vast majority of people do not care what they're influencing people towards. If it is Budweiser, that will pay me
money. If it is some other hot icon, they'll be money, I will advertise for you whatever you want, just pay me. And that's what that world is all about. And to set our standards to that degree, I want to be an online influencer, when I grow up. It's a very dangerous reality to face that I pray that Allah subhanaw taala rectifies. Now, with all of this bad news that you're hearing, how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect our youth? So our first part of advice is directed towards parents. And then the second part of advice is just for young adults and adults in general in terms of what we can do. So I'm going to pass it over to Rahmatullah, who's going to start off the section
on advice? So as I mentioned in the beginning, for me to say that I do not use social media, I do not use a cell phone, I do not game I do not use all this would be the most incorrect statement. I've said, for those of you in the room who actually follow me online, you know, that I am pretty active, however, is a very, very, very, very small portion of my life. So we're going to talk about advice to parents realistic advice here. I mentioned in the beginning that
the internet is there, it's social media is there, cell phones are there, all this stuff is there. It's a fact of life now. However, we have to look at it exactly the way and I love the way our parents did it, modeling it, when we grew up, it was all about regulated use. So this is probably one of the biggest things I will start with regulated use. Now when I say regulated use, what does that mean? That means you control how much time and I'm saying this for ourselves and for the people younger than us and for our children, our nieces or nephews, everything control how much time they have on it. Realistically speaking, what would a child an adolescent or even a teenager need
multiple hours on a cell phone for? Unless they're making huge business deals to plan your retirement? I don't think they need that long of a time on an on a device. So think about it like this. How much time is appropriate? We had the TV growing up, I was limited to an hour of TV a day. At the most I got to watch Arthur in the Magic School Bus. Okay, so how much time are we given our kids on this? My parents when I was growing up, they were a firm believer in saying our children need to be educated on how to use new technology. So they would we would have all the latest devices. When I was when I was younger, we had one of the first cell phones that literally had one
line to dial a number, but I was allowed to use it under the supervision of my parents. when things started to develop. When we started to get the internet, I was allowed to use it under supervision. So when we look at regulated use, there is no reason that anybody can justify to me in this room, that an adolescent needs the internet in their room behind closed doors.
It's a fact of life if you're telling me that my son needs a computer where he can lock his door and he's 12 years old, and he can do whatever whatever he wants on it. I'll be like, I completely disagree with that. Even high school kids, it's going to be something teachers schools are introducing this stuff into the teaching program. They have distance they have distance learning, they have online assignments, all of this, but there is no reason that we cannot say hey, listen, son, daughter, niece, nephew, brother, sister. You can use the laptop in the family room. You need quiet go in the kitchen, we're sitting in the family room. But why do they need it behind closed
doors? regulate the use public areas for device use certain time limits, they can watch their favorite cartoon on YouTube, that's completely fine, but don't give them five hours of cartoons. And this sounds extreme, but I've seen it. I've literally seen it. People will put the TV on
hear people keep younger people quiet for hours at a time, limit the use for that. So always remember this control the use the area of the users control the amount of views they have, I want you guys to be able to show your kids how to use these devices. I am not saying on how to do that. It's an important part. They need to know how to use a cell phone, they need to know how to use the internet, all this stuff, but you have to teach it to them, just like you teach them any other skill. I'm going to give you the worst example in is probably the most farthest example from this. Who here goes hunting?
Okay, one person. But anyway, look at hunting, we use rifles, would you give your son a rifle and say, okay, son, go do what you like with this. You can keep it in your room underneath your bed. And here's some bullets, right? So we teach our kids how to use these tools. We teach our kids how to use power tools, saws, all this kind of stuff. But we don't just let children have them and go away. cell phone, internet, all this kind of stuff. Same idea. There's so much they can access on the internet. We spoke about viewing things, pornography, all this type of stuff. So keep that use them. Now, second point I want to talk about is us as parents, older siblings, youth leaders, whatever you
want to see us as we need to be educated in the newest technology. And this is not always the easiest thing to do. And I say this because when I bought my new phone, I kid you know, there's still functions I'm finding on my phone. Now after a year that I didn't know it had, okay. But we need to be, especially as somebody who has younger people under us, we need to be educated in what they can do. Now, Naveed spoke about something I showed him yesterday, and I'm going to kind of see it probably most people in the in the front here will be able to see this. Who here knows what Snapchat is
good stuff, this is gonna blow your mind.
All parents are gonna freak out. Most of the kids already know where I'm going with this. Now Snapchat is an application where you used to send pictures, messages, and videos to each other short, short messages and whatnot. Now, before I show you this feature, Snapchat is also part of the newest challenge facing our law enforcement called the dark web. For the people educated in more it areas, you'll know what I'm talking about the dark web, Snapchat is untraceable. Okay, when I send a message to somebody on Snapchat disappears, as soon as they see them. Law enforcement is having difficulty tracking those messages because they disappeared. Now Snapchat, so we have our, our
camera view here. Okay, everybody can see sort of in the back. If we zoom out of the camera view, it brings up a map.
Okay, all the youth in the room know where I'm going with this. So it brings up a map and it'll show my little emoji they're sitting at the ISC having a good time. Now, if I zoom out for those people who haven't turned off, or turned on ghost mode, it'll tell me exactly where they are. So if I go to my friend lendman, Tim has turned it on because he's at the show right now. I'll see a little emoji up in Edmonton. I zoom in, and it will literally tell me the street address he is sitting on.
So how creepy is that? Okay, you no longer need to get followed. you accidentally need to leave this on and have Snapchat. And next thing you know, I know where your kid is.
So it's huge. It's something we need to think about comes back to my thing we need to get educated. If you didn't know about this until yesterday, right? And most of you, there's so many This is just the tip of the iceberg. So when you're giving your kids this phone when you're giving them their iPad, look at what they're installing, do some research for yourself. ask other people, what are these apps meet? What is Tinder?
Okay, what is my Tinder? Okay, this type of stuff, right? So or what is snapshot? What does it do look into these things? Because if we are not educated, then how can we expect these the younger generations to know that they're doing something wrong? So get involved, get involved with your parents life or not your parents, like get involved with your children's life, get involved with your nieces and nephews, let them use the technology but regulate the use, know what they're doing on it. know all the fancy ways around this. get things like antivirus programs, firewalls, parental controls on the devices, it's huge. Children will make mistakes. Adults will make mistakes. And it's
our job as supervisors to help them reduce those mistakes, train them in what's right and wrong.
And then this is going to be our last session before we open up the floor for discussion and, and questions in Sharla. So why don't want to discuss over here. Number one, again, just speaking to parents is the importance of leading by example. As parents one of the biggest challenges we have is telling our children do this while I do something else. So while you're at home, don't be addicted to your phone. Don't be addicted to the TV. Don't be addicted to the computer.
While I'm at home, it's a completely different set of rules, I will be sitting on the table, I'm on my phone, I'll be sitting in bed, I'm on my phone, I'll be, you know, doing something else, I'm on my phone, you have to lead by example. And this is one of the most fundamental Islamic principles, that in order for your children to respect you, you have to lead by example, if you're doing something else, and you command your choosing to do something else, it's not going to work. Number two, I alluded to this before, and this is just going off what he said. But again, I'm emphasizing this, again, there has to be a period of time in the day that you do not even have your device close
to you. And I'll share with you what Chef yahia Brahim does with his family. And that is at night at 8pm. Every single night at a bit back, he's put his router in his kitchen. So the router for the internet is in this kitchen. So all the radiation of all the appliances is like built up into his kitchen. Now there is no radiation anywhere else in the house. Number two, at 8pm. Every single night, everyone will put their device into the kitchen, you will not go to bed with your device, you will not go upstairs with your device, it stays over there. If you need to use your device for work, there is a time to do it, you need it for school, there's a time to do it, you needed to communicate
with your friends, there's a time to do it. And that is when you wake up and other things are going on. But you leave it in the kitchen so that people can go to sleep at night peacefully, you're not distracted. And again, the radiation and the blue lights, these are very dangerous things to think about. Number three, I would actually suggest in your houses have a public room where everyone uses the computer, everyone uses their devices, young children should not have access to internet or to devices by themselves alone in privacy, we may think that you know Mashallah. They're innocent, they're good. And I'm telling you Mashallah your children are innocent and good compared to the rest
of the shell team that are out there as bad as you think they are trusting. These are good kids that they're here on the machine in the machine on the Friday night. But the reality is, they're very bad kids everywhere. And it's not about your kid per se, it's about your child interacting with them, and the influence that they can have. So put worst case scenarios aside, just this topic of influence of friends is a very big thing. And you want to make sure that you close that channel. So have a public room that everyone can use a computer and their devices from number four, the importance of discussion and communication. I cannot emphasize this enough. You know, again, I give
this as a very embarrassing story. But when we had the eighth and eighth location, and uncle came with his, you know, teenage son, and as a Imam, can you please have the talk with my son? And I knew what he was talking about. I didn't want to do it. But I'm like, uncle, which talk are you talking about? You know, what should I talk to him about? And he's like, you know, the talk. And I was like, No, tell me what you want me to talk to him about. I mean, if you're gonna make it awkward for me, I'm gonna make it awkward for you. And that's how it went back for a bit. And then you know, we finally had the talk. But with that said, the importance of building trust with with youth, right?
You tell them that I'm getting your cell phone, this is an Amana, this is a trust, that can show easily be broken. If I find out that you're doing anything wrong, anything wrong with this, you know, that is a trust that will be broken. Now, obviously, there's ways to get around this, that you will not be able to figure out surfing the internet in private mode, where doesn't keep track of the websites that you visit doesn't keep cookies, or anything like that. It is completely anonymous browsing on that device. Number two, Snapchat, if you look at why it was developed, people had this fear that, hey, if I share these images with someone, they can possibly share those images with
someone else. So Snapchat built upon that fear, they said, You know what, we will develop a platform where as soon as you send it, you can put a time restriction one second, three seconds, 10 seconds, then after they viewed it, it automatically deletes there's no trace of it whatsoever. So you go through a child's phone, and you're no longer able to see anything that's on their phone, because it's automatically deleted. Right. So this is some of the dangers that you have to deal with. And this is part of that as you're raising our children, rather than them fearing us parents, they need to fear Allah subhanaw taala because as parents, we're not going to be around all the time. But
Allah subhanaw taala is, and that is why it's such a big thing to talk about responsibility with your child before you get them their own device. Number five, turning off GPS location settings and privacy settings. If you look at how children are kidnapped in this day and age, it often starts with a mother or a father sharing a picture of their child in their front yard, in their back yard. And then there's digital recording in the image itself, stuff that you won't see online. But if you download the image encoded into the image, or the exact latitude and longitude of where the image was taken, and then if you download all the
The images from any particular Facebook account or Instagram account, you can actually develop a map of the most common places that this person visits, you can come up with a strategy of how to kidnap this child. That's how it happens. You may think, what's the big deal of having GPS settings? Well, that is the big deal. And we all need to realize it after something terrible happens. And the last point I want to talk about, or the last two points is the parental filters. I cannot emphasize enough in our houses having a net nanny. What that means is either a free software or a paid software that is inexpensive, you know, three $4 a month, that will filter out anything hard on on
the internet, you can type in innocent words, and such haraam things will show up. So in order to filter that out, and make sure it doesn't show up on Google doesn't show up in search engines. You have these net nannies that Piquet young children, they shouldn't have access to certain material. And this will protect us from having that. And the last thing I want to mention, and this will be the introduction to my advice to adults, as well, is about not doing something online, that you wouldn't do in person, right, let us understand this concept. I will not do something online that I wouldn't do in person. So in terms of the way we interact with people, you know, if you go to
YouTube, the worst part about youtuber like the the battles and wars that take place, people are swearing each other cussing at each other. And then you look at like all the videos, this person is like, and he's like, Oh, I like this lecture. I like that lecture. And I'm like, What is the point of liking this lecture, this is what your luck is. But what ends up happening is, because you're behind a screen, no one knows who I really am, I can behave any way that I want. This is a battle not between us and people. This is a battle between us and our knifes essentially upon us. And what you know, we have the potential to be in goodness from what Allah Subhana Allah expects of us. So
only do online, that what you're willing to do in person. Now, I want to conclude with two simple things. advice to the young kids in this room, the young adolescents, the young teenagers, you may think your parents are your biggest enemy, your parents are out to get you they hate you, because they haven't gotten you your own device. Or the fact that you have to use your device in public, or the fact that every single night, they will ask you for your device to see what you're up to. This is one of the greatest manifestations of love. You do not realize that now. But as you grow older, when you have children, I'm sure you've heard this already, you will realize the value of this, the
fact that you have someone looking out for you, means the world as those children that have lost their parents that have no one looking out for them what they will do just to get their parents back, they will do anything. So while you're in this phase of Hey, but my friend is allowed to do this, my friend is allowed to do that. Put that aside. Are your parents coming from a place of love and protection? Or are they coming from a place of hate and maliciousness, and you know that your parents have done each and every single thing possible to make sure that you have food on your plate, that you get a good education, that you get good clothes, that you get all the best of
everything, they bend over backwards and kill themselves for you. So it's also my appreciation. If you don't get the freedoms of your friends, it's not coming from a bad place. That's just the way they're showing love to you right now. The last thing I want to conclude with advice to general public, we've had said a lot today. But one thing I want to emphasize enough, and this starts with what I began with is self accountability of the time that we spend on the internet, the average person will check their phone over 1000 times a day. I want us to think about that 1000 times a day, we will look at our phone, either to check the time to check our messages to check social media,
check WhatsApp, whatever the case, we will do that over 1000 times a day. Just to give you a hypothetical example. Imagine if you just said Subhan Allah 1000 times a day, just imagine that you would have achieved that you may think how am I supposed to handle that 1000 times a day you tell people to make us God and you're like brother, I don't have time. But if you have time to check your phone 1000 times a day you have time to make Vicar as well. And it's not just about making Vicar. It's just about our own sanity. Know what has happened to us as a civilization to a race to a species where we've let technology and these devices control our lives. They're if they're given to
us, we're happy if they're taken away from us, we become sad, depressed and angry. So monitor the time that you're spending, limit yourself and stay within those boundaries. Realistically, you don't need more than an hour or two a day. Even that might be too much. Realistically monitor the stuff that you're looking at. You don't need to know everything that's going on in the world. You don't need to know what's happening every celebrity's life. You don't need to know what's happening. Every sports
superstars life, if you miss out, you really not missing out on much, because more important than the life of this world is the life of the hereafter. So hold yourself accountable to that. And the third thing is just making dua to Allah subhana wa Tada, just making dua to Allah subhanho wa Taala that Allah protects our eyes, protects our ears, protects our minds, protects our thoughts, protects our children, from this mass, I guess, indoctrination, Caucasian, over taking the seeds as happening upon us through social media and technology. Because as time goes on, it's just going to get worse. So I want to take this opportunity to open up the floor for discussion, and for questions,
inshallah. So you can raise your hands or you can send it in by paper anonymously. On the sister sites history, man has pen and paper for sisters that want to send it in anonymously. Or if you want to raise your hand, you just raise your hand and we can discuss or answer your questions that you may have for both of us inshallah. Go ahead.
is
covering the camera. Yeah. The comment on that. So the brother was saying that he was reading an article about how Mark Zuckerberg and other you know, people out there that are engaged in technology, they've actually put tape on their webcams. So all, you know, laptops, and computers now all come with a webcam that's inside of it, it's not something that's external. So they actually put tape on side of it, because it's become more and more difficult to protect access to that webcam. And I will go even further than this. You know, one of the articles that I was reading for preparing for this was about Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs did not to give his children access to phones or tablets,
way into their late teens. That is when they got it as young children, they did not have access to it, right. And he wanted to make sure it stayed that way. And that is why people who are educated are making such conscious decisions. That Yes, it is difficult that I have to spend more physical time with my children, as opposed to the shortcut of giving them a tablet or an iPad. But these are the steps that need to be taken. So the brothers one was very valid, that they were taking tape and covering up the webcam. And this is a good practice to have in your homes. That unless you're using the webcam at that particular time. Tape it up so that no one can see what is going on.
Next question, comment? Anything from the sisters?
Right? Yeah.
What happened to me?
I went to Africa.
During around, all right, in August, I left and then I came back 2013. And there was a drastic change to the school I went to because of that, and most of my friends I used to hang with the rich.
I didn't even know who they were and they were both.
If you just hold on for a second, can you just ask the people in the back to keep their voices down? All the people in the back up, please keep your voices down. And let us respect one another. Right? When someone's talking, we're meant to listen to what they're saying. So whatever the other thing I will be repeating later on. So just be patient and show please continue.
progressively changed through many people's lives that I've met
as well, that affected them the entire time. So we have to have a policy as well, because many people couldn't talk on on their phone instead of imposing their tax on or leaving. Right? Attention Deficit Disorder. Yes, Panama. So our brother was sharing with us that he moved to Africa from 2012 to 2014. And when he came back, he saw a drastic change in his fellow classmates. So just within the span of two years, they've drastically changed. And one of the things that he highlighted was the attention deficit disorder where they had to implement a phone policy in the classrooms where kids couldn't, you know, focus long enough on to what the teacher is saying that they'd have to check
their phone every couple of seconds and again, this is one of the negative ramifications of that.
Anyone else? Yep.
personal experience from my personal life when I came from office at 530 or six o'clock at my home, so I saw that my son is five years old and my daughter is three years old. Both of them is busy with iPhone and another one is busy with the
tablet or not fast sorry. I felt very bad that I am coming from home office and I want to enjoy or spend time with my children but they are busy with their cell phone or tablet. So yesterday I was thinking that how I can maybe attempt combat situation and I can spend time with my children. So
finally I found that I need to
Provide them something alternative, better alternative so that they can they spend time with me, just so I thought that when I took my three year old daughter on my shoulder
so I
saw that she was enjoying. Then when I was I took my daughter on the shoulder and I was moving in the room, my five year son, he told me, Baba took me, right. So he left the phone and he was into my shoulder, right? So then they insert so much. They were waiting when dad will come right. My daughter thought that when my dad was on my right, my son was waiting that I want to get into that folder of my dad passed right before my daughter. So what is the point intuition is that that parents should be the best friends of their children, and they should provide to their children better alternatives so that they can
deviate from the
device Jazakallah Mashallah, I appreciate the fact not only that you shared, but you raise your voice that everyone could hear. So just to summarize, if in case you didn't hear, he saw that his young children ages three and five, were spending a lot of time on social spending a lot of time on social media. And then as soon as he decided that, you know what, let me spend some quality time with them something as simple as carrying his own children on his shoulders and having good time with them. They were willing to give up their devices for the sake of spending time with their father. And this is such a huge lesson that as parents, not only should we be providing alternatives
to social media, and technology, but the importance of quality time, we can't emphasize this enough. Parents need to be spending quality time with their children, and showing unconditional love to their children. Such a huge lesson, just looking for sharing. So we have some questions here that Rahmatullah is going to be answering, inshallah. The first one was talking about actually actually what the brother talked about, just an idea that we do need to touch on. So I'm going to paraphrase this a bit, but other ideas for parents to keep their children occupied other than the TV, the phone, etc, etc. Now, this is a huge point, like the brother pointed out, like we had been talking
about use, use other things to keep your children occupied. People are looking at me going well, what are examples of other things? For every single parent in this room, I want you to think about when you were a kid, and you didn't have a cell phone, okay, or you didn't have a TV or an iPad or something like that. We are busy people. We are busy adults, we all work some people work multiple jobs, I am not saying that you guys do not try to put the effort in everybody is busy. And I understand that I saw that in my own childhood. My parents were busy people, they had three of us to take care of they were both working. But make bonds with your children try and make some time for
them. And like the Vito was talking about, about checking your own device. And I'm not I'm not accusing anybody of doing these things. But I'm just saying, instead of checking your own advice, triangle and play with your kids, I remember it would be as simple as Oh, I'm gonna go take your hammer outside and play catch, okay, or teach them how to hit play table. If you don't have time for that. Give them other alternatives. Who remembers what a puzzle is? a puzzle is quite fun. Okay, give your kids puzzles, give your kids other activities to do in the house, put them in sports, sports is a huge thing. If you cannot afford to put them in programs, you know, paid for programs,
find other alternatives. But make it so that they have so much other things to do with their time, get a basketball net and put it in your backyard, let them go outside and play there is so many alternatives rather than to put them in front of the team or in front of the phone or in front of the iPad. For the younger children, you know, they are going to need a little bit more attention. But if they have older siblings, try and get the siblings to bond to each other. Because that's a hard thing to do. Everybody has sibling rivalries. But as kids try and make them, try as a parent to spend more time with your kids to get involved with them, get involved in their life, talk to them,
because you want them as they get older to be your friend. They are not going to tell you anything if they are not your friend. Talk to them.
The and I hope that answered the question. So get them involved in other activities. Think of things that you can do buy board games, buy all this kind of stuff. They don't need. I mean, we used to play Monopoly as a kid on the board. You can play it on your phone right now. I still like playing it on the board, right? There's just something about sometimes when you get annoyed with the banker, and you get a flip the bank notes, right, but
buy board games, buy puzzles, all this kind of stuff. And it may seem like it's really boring, but for a kid that's still pretty exciting. Now the next question, I had talks about privacy settings on your phone, so basically it says doesn't make a difference if your accounts are on private, so that nobody has access to that kind of stuff. Yes, it does.
Okay, these safeguards are put into place for a reason, it does make a difference. However I say this with caution. Remember that every firewall, every password can be hacked. So as soon as you uploaded something, don't think that it's 100% guaranteed that this is going to be safe. I'll give you an example. When Facebook and Instagram first came out, I was one of the first users on there. And that made me really, really sounded dated there. But anyway, so I was one of the first users on there. And Instagram used to have a glitch, where all of a sudden, for about 20 minutes everybody's profile used to become private at some point in the year or not private public at some point in the
year. So people who have private accounts, I randomly log on and be like, oh, they're public. Now. That's really weird. And this was a glitch in the system. So yes, privacy settings, are there firewalls are there antivirus services are there for those of us who know what Norton Antivirus is, Norton was famous in the 90s, for releasing their own viruses to go against their own program, that would affect people who didn't sign the term contract right away. And we used to see this when I used to work in it, that if I didn't get my clients to sign up for Norton right away, their computer would slow down as soon as the subscriptions finished. So remember that things are on the digital
world, and they are accessible, passwords can be broken, all that kind of stuff.
That's the last one. Can you explain more about blue light, and radiation? And is there ways to turn it off? Okay, so yes, I can, I'm not going to get into the physics of radiation, because I am not a physicist, but blue light and radiation basically. So when we touched about this, I'm going to start with blue light blue light is it comes from LEDs, okay, and I could be wrong about this. But most of our phones, you know, how LEDs LED screens, all this kind of stuff. And it's the blue, it's literally the blue colored light in the screen. Because we have such high definition displays now. And we have such radiant colors in our screen, every screen is emitting blue light. This is similar
to the studies that was done for when fluorescent lights came out. And they were worried about the color, the blue color from fluorescent lights affecting people's eyes, and also the reflections off of whiteboards reflecting people's eyes, it's the same idea except amplified. So when we talk about blue light, every phone now every computer even has what's called a blue light filter. You can even buy prescription glasses that have blue light filters in them, for people who are sitting at an office more than two hours a day for people who basically work on a computer. So it is important to say that, if you're using many devices with blue light, if you're if you're in this environment, you
have to use the safeguards in place. So the blue light filter, what it'll do is it'll allow your brain to start shutting down, it'll allow you to fall asleep. And like I said, this weekend, try it if you have a phone, if you have a computer, and you probably lots of people probably use them. You know what, Netflix, everybody watches Netflix? I do watch Netflix. Okay, YouTube, I thought you said YouTube, sorry.
So all this kind of stuff, turn the blue light filter on earlier on in the night, and watch how much quicker you'll fall asleep. Now for those of you who are blessed with a wonderful sleep pattern, May Allah keep that with you. But for some of us who who find that trouble sleeping, it is those blue lights. So keep those filters on do that kind of stuff. In terms of radiation, um, radiation was a big thing, you know, with the, with the devices in the home, especially things like wireless routers, TVs, all this type of they emit radiation that is unhealthy for us. Radiation is a cause of many, many, many things. The biggest thing was the microwaves started the radiation scare. And
radiation affects our bodies in negative ways. So every device that you have, you know, if you turn Wi Fi off, forget even Wi Fi, cell phone service, radiation is one of the most dangerous radiations. So think about that when you're using these devices, and I am going to pass it off. So here's a comment from a sister. She says I said I want a good lecture Mashallah parents get paranoid listening to these kinds of lectures, can you please give advice to the parents to be patient and help kids to overcome this addiction with love, otherwise, these parents are going to become hostile.
So I was really surprised it came from a parent and not from, you know, a sister that seems older rather than young child, but it's true. You know, you win hearts with love, you win minds with love. And you just change small actions or immediate actions with fear to mean that you intimidate someone. They'll stop for that given moment. But later on, they're going to go back and change to what they were before. But if you can use love and kindness and mercy as an approach, this is like long term of change, just behavioral change that takes place. So parents need to understand that that behavioral change will only take plus place through love and mercy.
Sister
is asking that when she tries to restrict her children's usage of social media or phone or tablets, they call her the worst parent, and they call her a dictator, what would you advise with that, and I spoke about this towards the end of the lecture, that children need to understand that their parents are coming from a very good place, that they love you, they want what is best for you. And that is why you are doing it right. As a young toddler, you wanted to touch the stove and burn your hand, and your parents had to pull you back from it because they're trying to protect you. Now you just don't see the danger in this technology. And that is why you think that they're preventing you from
something good from something that you enjoy. But the challenge over here is, why is technology causing you so much pain? Just ask yourself that question that when you're deprived of it, why is it causing you pain? And this is a moment of reflection, that if it is causing you pain, perhaps you're doing something wrong? Perhaps you need to limit yourself, perhaps you need to limit yourself with it.
Then the last comment, or one of the last columns this teacher makes is that a lot of parents are not knowledgeable about the apps that were spoken about, is it possible for the machete to organize a course or a seminar to educate parents about these apps, and how to prevent usage or over usage of these apps, you'll be exposed to them and how to set up filters. And inshallah that is one of the ideas that we do have, that we are planning on having a family conference sometime soon. And inshallah we will try to make sure that that is one of the topics that is discussed.
The last thing that we will discuss right now, what are some ways for teens to stay accountable for their actions, with the help of their parents, without it becoming a source of conflict? And I think we sort of alluded to this before that understand where the parents are coming from. And for children, you know, we will always say that our parents don't trust us enough. Why don't you trust me? Why don't you think I'm responsible? Well, part of being mature and part of showing maturity is showing self accountability, that if you do something wrong, you hold yourself accountable. And before you do something wrong, you hold yourself accountable to make sure it doesn't happen. And
that is how trust is built. But I would also add to this, that one of the things that we did here at the ISC is to hire a youth coordinator she called Ignacio, I don't think he's here tonight. But Mashallah roboticle. He's a great asset to this community. And he does a great job mentoring these teens. So if you have a young teenage boy, young teenage girl, you know, get them involved with these programs, let them get mentored by qualified people that will give them direction islamically and can be a big brother for them, like shikhandi Nasir. So that's something to get involved in, you can send an email to [email protected] for more information on that. With that having been said, the last
thing I want to talk about is next week's halaqa, which is the last of the community discussions, and I believe that it is perhaps one of the more important ones that we're doing, which is called the role of women in the Muslim community, the role of women in the Muslim community, we will be having myself and a panel of sisters that will be talking about these topics. So we encourage the brothers to come and listen. And likewise we encourage the sisters to come and participate as well. This is your opportunity to give feedback in Sharla. So desire communicated to everyone for coming out tonight. Mila spinales Allah bless you and your families. drive home safe, supine, Nicola mobium
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