Parental controls are useful – but insufficient – for protecting children online

What you need to know:

  • Children are generally considered ill-prepared to make informed decisions, given that they are still maturing intellectually, physically and socially.
  • Being online allows the future generation to develop digital literacy skills such as searching, modifying or sharing information online.
  • You have not appreciated the social nature of the African child, whereby that single smartphone owned by the neighbour’s kid is often shared widely.
  • More importantly, parents must provide a relationship of trust where children feel more comfortable reporting suspicious online behaviour from their online friends, be they real or imposters.

Most parents are proud of how extremely “digital” or Internet-savvy their children are. But they rarely stop to reflect on the risks that undermine the opportunities available for kids and teens getting online.

Children are considered a vulnerable group because of their transient stage of development. They are generally considered ill-prepared to make informed decisions, given that they are still maturing — intellectually, physically and socially.

Marketers and some other less-celebrated professionals exploit this vulnerable stage of development in order to push some of their products, knowing that an adolescent buyer is potentially a life-long consumer. 

This explains why some children are able to own the latest editions of smartphones, two or three generations ahead of what their parents are using. 

These newer gadgets are essentially computers in the hand, and provide children with a gateway to the Internet, where both opportunities and risks await them.

Whereas the opportunities are widely acknowledged, the risks are rarely discussed. Being online allows the future generation to develop digital literacy skills such as searching, modifying or sharing information online.

These skills are necessary in the 21st century and should by all means be encouraged rather than discouraged.

However, once the child is online, he or she becomes exposed to the whole Internet. In other words, fraudsters, porn stars, impostors, gamblers and drug peddlers, among other characters, could be targeting your child without exception.

BEYOND THE PARENT

These fellows often lurk within popular social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, among others.

They appreciate the vulnerable psychological status of children online, and will often masquerade as teen-aged, trusted online friends in order to lure youngsters into various forms of misbehaviour. And you are in for some shock if you think your children are safe because they do not have a phone, or their phone has no Internet capability.

You have not appreciated the social nature of the African child, whereby that single smartphone owned by the neighbour’s kid is often shared widely. This places the solution to protecting kids online beyond the individual parent. It must be addressed comprehensively through a policy taken up at a higher — and perhaps a national — level.

What policy interventions are available to protect our children online? One option would be to enforce the requirement that suppliers provide parental controls in their products. Whereas this is already happening for some digital television decoders, the complex steps required for granular control will often leave parents confused and unable to apply them.

AN INFORMED CHILD

For Internet and content services, providers also should be mandated to provide parental controls, hopefully with better, easier user interfaces. Additionally, options for content filtering should be provided in order to protect children from harmful content online.

More difficult to deal with, however, are the impostors who fake their identity in order to engage children online, with ulterior motives that may range from cyberbullying to sexting and sextortion among many other new forms of digital crime.

Personnel from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrange confiscated desktop computers allegedly used in cybersex crime, at the NBI headquarters in Manila on January 29, 2014. Philippine authorities said they had detained 11 people in raids on two fake call centre businesses that sold child pornography online to global clients. AFP PHOTO | NOEL CELIS

In such circumstances the first line of defence is an informed child, who is aware of such characters and behaviour online and knows how to respond appropriately. 

More importantly, parents must provide a relationship of trust where children feel more comfortable reporting suspicious online behaviour from their online friends, be they real or impostors.

The state must also provide special investigative and judicial capacity that can quickly respond to online crimes against children.  

With over 20 million Kenyans now online, and the majority being young adults and adolescents, Kenya does present an easy and fertile ground for international digital criminals targeting the youth. The time to start protecting them is now.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Twitter:@jwalu Email: [email protected]