A recent trend that is closely being watched by governments around the world is the banning of minors’ access to social media sites and apps. Australia had led this initiative being the first to pass and implement legislation to effect this ban. Following behind it are Western European countries including, among others, Germany, France, Denmark, Norway, and Greece taking decisive steps to follow suit. Closer to home, Malaysia’s new Online Safety Act will bar children aged 16 and below from creating social media accounts in 2026.
Perhaps the Philippines should start considering such strong measures to curb the long-evident dumbing down effect social media has had on Filipino minds. A recent “report” published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) exhibits a litany of the supposedly poisonous input social media activity contributes to Filipino thinking. It cited, for one, how “ChatGPT was used by a Philippine-based marketing company called Comm&Sense Inc. to mass generate pro-Marcos and anti-Duterte comments that were used on Facebook and TikTok.”
Furthermore the report asserts…
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Individuals cited political actors as the primary source of misleading information, with social media platforms, especially Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, as the dominant vectors through which false narratives spread.
Of course, nothing about how mainstream journalists and media ought to at least reflect on their own accountability for their loss of the public’s confidence in their content is mentioned in the PCIJ “report”. Instead, authors Nikko Balbedina, Regine Cabato, Gian Libot and Cristina Chi would rather pass the buck to the “sinister forces” and “actors” that propagate “misleading” information and the dumb people who consume these.
Perhaps that is a fair appraisal of the situation in the Philippines. If we are then to follow the logic of PCIJ’s “thought leaders” the solutions are therefore the obvious one already being implemented elsewhere — curtailment of access to these tools of “misinformation”. Indeed, perhaps we need to go further and propose that implementation of similar measures in the Philippines be totally next level; that is, restrictions should apply to Filipinos of all ages.
Such a draconian measure can be justified by another set of research findings — that Filipino brains are host to amongst the world’s most stunted intellectual faculties. In an Inquirer op-ed some time back, columnist Randy David observed…
If social media is any indication of the quality of discourse, and therefore the level of intellect prevalent in the population that has access to technology and the internet, then things do not look good.
The tendency to believe in misinformation and disinformation — contributing even to spreading these on social media platforms — has shown how many Filipinos lack critical thinking.
Consider then, under this light, the Philippines’ Congressional Commision on Education (EDCOM) findings in 2025 showing that 18M Filipinos finished high school despite being functionally illiterate.
“In our EDCOM rounds, we have detected kids as old as 15 years old who cannot read a simple story. We have seen that on the ground. And I’m sure most of you teachers, principals, have also seen this on the ground”, [Co-Chair Senator Sherwin] Gatchalian said.
It is quite evident that it is not only Filipino minors who are at risk of being hoodwinked wholesale into acting on disinformation propagated over social media. Indeed, the Filipino public itself is the country’s weakest link and single point of failure in the dysfunctional scheme of things we are seeing today. It is time decisive measure are taken to stem the flow of Internet slop into Filipino minds.
When one considers how relatively recent such scholarly studies have been conducted into the Philippines’ intellectual bankruptcy, it is reasonable to expect that the numbers quoted by this recent research represent only the tip of what is likely a massive iceberg of stunted intellectual faculties that hobble Filipinos’ march to modern governance.
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