Ghana has been ranked third leading in social media usage in the world.
According to information released by the Cyber Security Authority, (CSA) during this year’s Child Online Protection Forum for Media and Children dubbed Africa Safer Internet Day 2023.
Ms. Grown-Eyeson said CSA revealed that an average internet user in Ghana spends over four hours on their smartphones.
She added that sports betting is the leading most visited website in Ghana with 11.18 million daily visits, followed by news sites with 10.79 million viewers, social media came third with 10.68 million visits, porn sites with 5.92 million and Wikipedia followed with 2.57 million.
“Our citizens are quite active on social media, and statistics show that we are ranked the third country with active social media presence behind Nigeria and Philippines in the whole world.
“Averagely it’s about five hours daily in Ghana, but I wouldn’t want to look at it from the economic impact, whether it is positive or impacting on economic development. You may be surprised, access to betting sites is one of them, also it is not very nice to say but even pornographic access is one of them,” the statistics stated.
The event brought together officials of the Authority, Ministry of Children and Social Protection, Parent Teacher Association, UNICEF and school children including those from Dzorwulu Special School to interact with cyber security expect about the effect of internet and government effort put in place to ensure child safety.
Giving the cyber dimension in Ghana, the Head of Child Online Protection at the Authority, Ms. Afua Brown Eyeson said 53% of the population representing 16.99 million uses internet with at least 91.9% of these internet users are on smartphones.