Protecting Children and Youth in the Internet Age

PROTECTING CHILDREN AND THE YOUTH IN THE INTERNET AND THE MOBILE AGE

Internet and mobile technology can bring people together who otherwise would never know each other and create a virtual universe with every kind of information imaginable available at your fingertips. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, the Internet and mobile age has a dark side. It is full of material that is inappropriate for children and all kinds of predators. But because of it the children and youth need not miss out on all the positive aspects of the technology by refraining from it.

Innovative concepts can be implemented to protect children such as: organizing awareness seminars, conducting e-safety trainings, Internet security events. We can also launch a code of conduct for cybercafés. Promote child safety as a part of the legal discussions in the government. We can help in supporting and coordinating E-Safety work programs which are taking place around the world. We can also have various networks to implement a safer internet and mobile computing like:

• Network of hotlines- Which can allow members of the public to report illegal content they come across on the Internet, which they pass on the appropriate body for action such as the police.

• Network of "awareness nodes" – Which can ensure the exchange of best practices and carry out awareness actions like training of teachers, parents and children in safer use on the Internet.

• Network of “Child Safety Online”- The network should also develop a common approach to protecting children in this area and influence relevant policies and strategies to enhance children's rights online.

Protecting children and youth from the evil effects of mobile and internet computing has two sides. It involves education and prevention.

1. EDUCATION: The first line of defense in keeping your kids safe on the Web is to teach them how to use it safely. Parents should supervise kids online and educate them on the evils and also:
Show children appropriate content on the web,
Enable children to benefit from the Internet
Teach children to decide on their own, what they want to see and what they want to avoid
Create awareness among the children about the consequences of their online behavior

2. PREVENTION: In a drive to provide clean Internet to the young people we can start an initiative of “Internet Filtering for junior Internet users”. We can help protecting the junior Internet users by: • Mutual help amongst parents and community at large in maintaining a blacklist of websites • Provision of a free filtering service from ISPs • Education of parents in deploying / subscribing the filtering service

A parents’ group can be made responsible to maintain the blacklist and trained members of the group will assess and classify any reported website by its content. Decency levels will be assigned to each site on the list and this information will be subscribed by the local ISPs or mobile operators. They will be providing filtering service free-of-charge, which is attached to the junior account. The filtering service will be making reference to the blacklist maintained by the parents’ group. The parents in each family, will be able to determine the level of decency suitable for their children. Thus, age verification and validation can play a major role in helping the children and the youth of today in the right direction.

Children are at risk. Can the risk be managed? Yes, if we implement a variety of innovative approaches, we WILL be able to limit that risk.
TOGETHER WE CAN!