It is no longer news that children's lives are becoming increasingly impacted by the digital realm in our modern world. There are a wide array of educational resources, entertainment, and social connections available on the Internet. Despite this, it is possible to have a lot of online threats and vulnerabilities for children as a result of such a digital transformation.
As parents, educators, policymakers, and technology companies begin to come together to create a younger generation's online ecosystem which promises to be a safer one, it is clear that the importance of protecting children online has never been more apparent.
Campaigners have welcomed a set of new regulations regulating how online services should deal with children's data as they become effective as the regulations are set to take effect soon. It has been mandated that websites and apps take into account the “best interests” of their child users from Thursday onwards, to avoid fines of up to 4% of global revenue.
The Age Appropriate Design Code was written into law as part of the 2018 Data Protection Act, which implemented GDPR for the UK as well.
The most traumatic thing a parent can go through is receiving a communication from a hacker informing them that their child's most sensitive information is slated to be exposed on the Internet unless the school pays a ransom to get the information back.
The information includes passports and birth certificates, profile pictures, and classroom location information.
As a result of a horrendous situation that occurred recently in Nevada, Clark County School District (CCSD) was regarded by many as being the nation's fifth-largest school system, serving nearly 300,000.
The nightmare continues, with parents in the district losing track of what's going on at school and more informing themselves about what's happening through hackers than through school officials, who seem less transparent about what's happening since the district suffered a breach two years ago.
There has been a marked change in the way children encounter information, communicate, and entertain themselves during the last few decades, largely due to the exponential growth of the digital landscape.
Although the digital revolution has brought us a great deal of convenience, it has also introduced several dangers to children's physical, mental, and emotional health.
As a result of the vast expanse of the Internet, there is a constant threat of exposure to inappropriate content, which includes violence, explicit material, and hate speech, which can be accessed by children inadvertently, leading to harmful effects on their development.
The issue of cyberbullying is one of increasing concern as children are increasingly likely to be targeted by online harassment, cyberbullying, and social media pressures and rules. This can lead to emotional distress and other mental health problems in children.
Identifying thefts, online tracking, and data breaches are among the serious risks that children face when sharing their personal information online, bringing their identities into danger.
In addition to screen time causing addiction, it also plays a role in challenging physical activity and can have undesirable effects on children's cognition and social development when excessive screen use occurs.
Making The Digital World a Safer Place
Parental Involvement
To foster responsible behaviour online and educate children about the risks and dangers associated with the internet, we need to have open and honest communication with them.
To monitor and regulate their child's online activities, parents can take advantage of parental control software, which provides them with the ability to set settings that restrict how their child may use his or her devices and how he or she may access certain websites or applications.
Children's online safety can be enhanced by the following actions by tech companies:
Enhancing Safety Features in their Platforms: Aside from content filtering, security reports, and privacy controls within their platforms, companies are creating features and tools at a high level to enhance online safety.
To reduce risks for young users, age-appropriate designs were created to minimize the risks associated with those interfaces and contents.
A new White House initiative aims to create a cyber workforce and educational framework for children to enhance the importance of cyber education in the formative years of life. As states such as New York have introduced computer science and data fluency standards in their education systems, these measures are still falling short of what state education systems need.
It is the same idea as teaching children not to start a fire when it comes to the current goal of digital proficiency. The need to go beyond the current situation and provide children with the skills to extinguish fires goes beyond the mandate.
To deal with this, it is necessary to provide children with comprehensive cyber-hygiene training - informing them about how to protect their data while in transfer, how to protect their online identities, and how to effectively deal with attacks.
Many aspects of child online protection must be addressed for the issue to be resolved with immediate effect.
As a result of the statistics presented in this article, it becomes evident that there is a grave problem that has to be addressed and the necessity of collaborative efforts is pressing.. Our children need to be educated, regulated, and encouraged to use technology responsibly for us to create a safer digital environment for them.
