{"id":293096,"date":"2026-02-20T07:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T07:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/293096\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T07:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T07:57:13","slug":"six-nations-maro-itoje-warns-of-corrosive-social-media-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/293096\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations: Maro Itoje warns of \u2018corrosive\u2019 social media abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">Itoje, himself the son of Nigerian parents, added: \u201cI think we\u2019re going to see in the coming years a huge amount of damage that has been done to us as humans and as a society as a result of social media in terms of brains and brain development.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cSecondly, the stuff around Edwin is obviously incredibly sad. It\u2019s something that no one should have to go through and it\u2019s a further reminder that there\u2019s still work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">Racism is an issue across several sports, with Real Madrid footballer Vinicius Junior allegedly abused by Gianluca Prestianni of Benfica during a Champions League tie this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">Prestianni denies the allegation, which is being investigated by European governing body Uefa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWe have these incidents that happen which are terribly sad and they should be condemned with full force when they do happen,\u201d Itoje said. \u201cBut what happened to Vinicius Junior &#8230; 30 years ago that probably wouldn\u2019t have even made the press. The referee would have told him to get on with it. His team-mates probably would have said that to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cSo while the stuff we\u2019re seeing, whether it\u2019s Vinicius Junior, whether it\u2019s Edwin Edogbo, they are terribly sad and we as a community need to keep on stamping this type of thing out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cBut I do also believe that we are moving in somewhat the right direction, although moving in somewhat the right direction is not a given.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"nfOBuVOCysHhj\" style=\"display:none\">&#8211; AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Itoje, himself the son of Nigerian parents, added: \u201cI think we\u2019re going to see in the coming years&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1903,74,13381,162194,11687,35142,162196,162195,28903,1634,5504,68924,162193,162192,1073,17154,111,139,69,1118,69724,4739,1072,213,31145,765,8218],"class_list":{"0":"post-293096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-abuse","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-captain","11":"tag-corrosive","12":"tag-criticised","13":"tag-debut","14":"tag-edogbo","15":"tag-edwin","16":"tag-effects","17":"tag-england","18":"tag-following","19":"tag-irelands","20":"tag-itoje","21":"tag-maro","22":"tag-media","23":"tag-nations","24":"tag-new-zealand","25":"tag-newzealand","26":"tag-nz","27":"tag-of","28":"tag-racist","29":"tag-six","30":"tag-social","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-suffered","33":"tag-test","34":"tag-warns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}