Child safety online: Experts advocate for safe digital access with privacy as priority

The online platforms including social media sites offer children an opportunity to learn new skills and develop social networks. The platforms may also pose a risk to children’s privacy and exposure to harmful practices including child trafficking and sexual abuse. Here also exists risks of cyberbullying and other forms of peer-to-peer violence.

In a discussion towards ensuring children are protected online, delegates at the 2024 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia called for multistakeholder collaboration to ensure children benefit from digital technologies while eliminating the risks involved.

Eugene Kaspersky, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kaspersky opined that there is no problem with children using digital technologies, but only the time that they spend on online platforms.

“The negative side is that the content they consume is random. It could be dangerous, the people they contact online are random, and they could be dangerous, especially for small kids,” said Kaspersky.

The cybersecurity expert also argued that while the focus is on how kids use online platforms, there are also risks associated with exposure to tech-enabled toys that children access offline.

Syed Munir, the chairperson of the Institute for Policy, Advocacy and Governance (IPAG) argued that the internet has offered a lifeline to children from marginalised communities and those with disabilities.

By enabling children to use online media platforms, they are able to acquire new skills. He cited that some of the existing regulations to put children off digital platforms have failed, hence the need to make the technology safe instead of locking out the youngest population.

Building for children

Social media platforms including X, Facebook, and Instagram have set a cap on the age limit of users, where one has to be above 13 years old to set up an account.

To add more safety nets, Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram have rolled out specific features targeted towards teenagers. For Instance, all teen accounts on Instagram are now made private in certain regions.

On Facebook, the tech giant introduced ‘Messenger Kids’, a product that allows parents to control their children’s activities. Using the Parent Dashboard from their Facebook account, parents can manage their child’s friends, monitor their activity and change their account settinEË4s.

Deepali Liberhan, the Global Director of Safety Policy at Meta explain how the platform has banked on over 50 features to enhance the safety of children online.

In building for the children, the platform’s strategy includes education resource development, providing meaningful content and managing the time that children spend on the platforms.

“Teen accounts have restricted messaging where they are not exposed to unwanted interactions from adults. With the content control settings, there is limited exposure to sensitive content,” she said.

To limit the time that children spend online, the platform receives notifications asking them to leave the app after they spend more than an hour online.

“We have also enabled an automatic sleep mode. Between 10 pm and 7 am, all their notifications get muted,” she explained.