MANY pundits among older generation of influencers say that social media networks are corrupting the youth and children.

But there is a school of thought which trusts that the opposite is also feasible, thus serving as an ethics ambassador via social media.

One pundit is persuaded that it is highly feasible, pointing at professional platforms like LinkedIn, X and Instagram, with an assertion that these are powerful tools for advocacy, policy explanation and community building.

That is definitely true, but what is the point in ethics advocacy among professional groups with well-paid jobs and most with families? It could easily be the proverbial effort of preaching to the converted, indeed little more than a festive occasion.

Trouble comes up in being an ethics ambassador among those yet to be convinced about ethics and indeed who may not even have started thinking about ethics except perhaps in transitory initiation rites especially in the religious context.

Other than that people learn ethics by seeing, hearing, touching or eating and once they are attracted to the glitter or taste, much of the rest is a matter of time unless some other influence comes up just in time to wean off such person from that orientation.

Not falling into peer group pressures via faulty examples is scarcely what an ethics envoy can succeed to do.

In that sense, the sort of professional setting of ethical advocacy is more suited to reinforcing ethical choices already made or being lived, in the sense that no choices had to be made in the first place.

Many youths grow up in stable and well-ordered families and the least they can do for their next of kin is to take up the flame and bring up respectable family units as a foremost ethical yearning. Where the bonds are weaker, the pressure is lessened.

Casual observation indicates that items most commonly attracting interest from the public in general, and among the youth or children in particular, aren’t the sort of material which ethics regards as positive.

When feelings are directed to excitement for structural failures usually leading to orienting one’s passion elsewhere, not schooling or family, there isn’t much an ethics ambassador can do.

So we need to protect the dreams of children for them to grow up with the zeal to succeed and set up families, not to scream at them later on while busy talking about ethics.