THE OUTRAGE IS palpable, and rightly so. The video from St. Theresa Convent Catholic School—showing minors and teens gleefully chanting the explicit lyrics of Christoph the Change’s “XXX”—is not merely a lapse in judgment by a school administration or an artist. It is a stark, undeniable symptom of a larger, more insidious crisis: the uncontrolled exposure of Liberian youth to adult content through social media and digital platforms, and the collective failure of our institutions to erect necessary safeguards.
AT THE HEART of this controversy lies an uncomfortable truth that commentator Morial Yekulah hinted at: If these students had never had the means to access such adult music, they would have had no knowledge of the lyrics to demonstrate. Their performance was not an act of innate corruption but a learned behavior, a mimicry of content that has flooded their digital lives. The incident exposes a critical pipeline: social media algorithms and unregulated music streaming services deliver graphically sexualized and violent content directly to the smartphones of children.
UNDOUBTEDLY, THIS HAS normalizwe what was once considered taboo for their age group. The school auditorium did not create this problem; it merely became the stage where a digitally acquired script was performed for all to see. This episode forces us to confront a fundamental shift. Previous generations might have encountered risqué content in limited, shared, and often private ways. Today, the floodgates are open. Platforms designed for global engagement make no meaningful distinction between an adult user in one country and a minor in Liberia.
THE RESULT IS a forced and premature adulthood, where children parrot lyrics and adopt behaviors they do not fully understand, simply because the content is at their fingertips, marketed as “trending,” and devoid of context. Therefore, while the calls to hold the artist and school administrators accountable are just and necessary, they address only the proximate cause. Punishing the adults in the room is a reactive measure. A proactive, national response must focus on the root: the urgent need for the regulation of social media and digital content access for minors and teenagers in Liberia.
WE MUST MOVE beyond shock and towards strategy. It is time for a concerted national dialogue involving the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Liberia Telecommunications Authority, parent-teacher associations, and civil society to establish and enforce digital protection standards.
Liberia should explore developing a national framework for age-appropriate content ratings for publicly performed and widely disseminated music and media, similar to systems elsewhere, tailored to our social context.
EVERY SCHOOL, ESPECIALLY those entrusted with the care of minors, must have explicit, stringent policies for event programming and a zero-tolerance stance for content that sexualizes or exploits children. The “students requested it” defense must be rendered null and void. The students at St. Theresa are not the villains in this story; they are the canaries in the coal mine. Their performance is a distress signal, showing us how deeply unfiltered adult content has seeped into the psyche of our youth.
WE CAN CONDEMN the performance, but we must diagnose the cause. The responsibility is now on our legislators, regulators, educators, and parents to build the digital defenses that our children desperately need. We must regulate not to stifle creativity or connection, but to protect innocence and ensure that the journey to adulthood is guided, not hijacked by a relentless and uncurated digital world. The future of Liberia’s youth depends on our courage to act now.
