Archbishop Gordon praises Govt’s crackdown on alcohol, road indiscipline

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

[email protected]

Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don has praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment for the re­cent in­crease in traf­fic fines, as well as the in­tro­duc­tion of age lim­its for al­co­hol us­age, mar­i­jua­na con­sump­tion and gam­bling.

“I want to com­mend the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the lead­er­ship of our Prime Min­is­ter, who has done a few things re­cent­ly that re­al­ly have piqued my in­ter­est ... The dis­ci­pline around dri­ving, you might look at it as ha­rass­ment, mak­ing mon­ey, this or that,” he said.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Samar­i­tan Move­ment at Arch­bish­op’s House, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Gor­don said he views the tougher penal­ties as an im­por­tant lever for na­tion-build­ing.

“We have be­come an in­dis­ci­plined so­ci­ety, and push­ing that lever has forced all of us to come to dis­ci­pline in a very dif­fer­ent way,” he said.

Gor­don raised the is­sue dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on sui­cide and self-harm among young peo­ple, af­ter clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Isol­de Ali Ghent re­vealed that be­tween 2020 and 2025, Child­line record­ed 1,500 calls and mes­sages re­lat­ed to self-harm and sui­ci­dal ideation, most­ly from youths aged 12 to 17.

Gor­don warned that so­cial me­dia may be even more harm­ful to young peo­ple than al­co­hol and gam­bling and sug­gest­ed im­ple­ment­ing re­stric­tions sim­i­lar to those ap­plied in Aus­tralia.

In De­cem­ber last year, as part of an amend­ment to the On­line Safe­ty Act, Aus­tralia passed and en­act­ed a law that pro­hib­it­ed chil­dren un­der the age of 16 from hold­ing so­cial me­dia ac­counts on ma­jor plat­forms. The goal of the law is to pro­tect chil­dren from on­line harms, such as cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, harm­ful con­tent, and oth­er risks as­so­ci­at­ed with al­go­rithm-dri­ven so­cial me­dia use.

Un­der Aus­tralian law, Face­book, In­sta­gram, Kick, Red­dit, Snapchat, Threads, Tik­Tok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 mil­lion Aus­tralian dol­lars if they fail to take rea­son­able steps to re­move the ac­counts of Aus­tralian chil­dren younger than 16. Mes­sag­ing ser­vices such as What­sApp and Face­book Mes­sen­ger are ex­empt.

As a re­sult, so­cial me­dia com­pa­nies have de­ac­ti­vat­ed, re­strict­ed, or re­voked ac­cess to about 4.7 mil­lion ac­counts iden­ti­fied as be­long­ing to Aus­tralian users un­der 16.

“They’ve cre­at­ed it to be ad­dic­tive. And I think fol­low­ing Aus­tralia, and many coun­tries are look­ing at that now, we should be look­ing at a law to pro­tect our chil­dren from so­cial me­dia the same way we’re pro­tect­ing them from al­co­hol,” the Arch­bish­op said.

“I am not talk­ing about do­ing cen­sor­ship for the na­tion. I’m say­ing, let’s pro­tect our chil­dren. Then we could do, like we did with al­co­hol, we could have a pre­mi­um pack­age of in­ter­net that you have to be age-ap­pro­pri­ate to sign in­to,” he added.

He al­so warned that pornog­ra­phy is a ma­jor na­tion­al emer­gency, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young boys. He said chil­dren are be­ing ex­posed as ear­ly as eight to 10 years old, which he be­lieves harms their men­tal de­vel­op­ment and self-im­age.

“Their bod­ies aren’t even ready to un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing. And their minds are not ready to un­der­stand this stim­u­la­tion, which is cre­at­ing ma­jor hav­oc in the de­vel­op­ment of our chil­dren,” he said.

Gor­don urged the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect chil­dren from pornog­ra­phy and so­cial me­dia, sim­i­lar to the way they plan to pro­tect them from al­co­hol.

He said chil­dren are suf­fer­ing from lone­li­ness, iso­la­tion and poor self-es­teem and be­lieves a ban on so­cial me­dia and pornog­ra­phy could help re­duce these is­sues. Gor­don al­so not­ed that schools are over­whelmed and need at least three to four times more so­cial work­ers to sup­port stu­dents.

Child­Line pro­vides free, con­fi­den­tial sup­port for chil­dren and young peo­ple up to age 25, avail­able 24/7 at 800-4321 or 131.

The Samar­i­tan Move­ment is a na­tion­al trau­ma-re­sponse ini­tia­tive com­mis­sioned by the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. The move­ment will con­vene men­tal health ex­perts, ed­u­ca­tors, and faith lead­ers to ad­dress the mount­ing ev­i­dence of trau­ma and self-harm in our schools, the long-term cost of in­ac­tion on fam­i­lies, class­rooms, and com­mu­ni­ties, and the Church’s role as a bridge of hope and a cen­tre for heal­ing.

Pro­gramme man­ag­er Dar­rion Nar­ine said in a small sam­ple of 48 stu­dents, 40 per cent re­port­ed thoughts or be­hav­iours of self-harm. This is not just a sta­tis­tic; these are sons, daugh­ters, broth­ers, and sis­ters.

“Every school we vis­it­ed this past year had stu­dents in vis­i­ble dis­tress, some cry­ing out for help, oth­ers silent­ly suf­fer­ing. Teach­ers and prin­ci­pals are over­whelmed and ex­haust­ed,” he said.

He said with­out ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, this wave of trau­ma and hope­less­ness will deep­en.

“We can­not af­ford to wait,” he stat­ed.