Today’s children can’t imagine life without a social networking profile, sharing photographs online or gaming with their friends. In India over 30 million children have a mobile phone and an estimated 134 million are expected to come online by 2017.
While the internet provides opportunities for India’s youth to learn and share, the lack of digital literacy and online safety measures mean children are exposed to a greater risk of cyberbullying, identity theft and sexual exploitation.
In 2013, the Delhi High Court noted that India is behind the times on online protection of children. Three years on, changes in child online safety-related policies and implementation of digital literacy programs in schools have moved forward very slowly. While policymakers are quite active in this area, the discussion is centered more around cybercrime than child protection and initiatives seem fragmented. But while progress may be slow in general, one of the country’s international mobile internet providers, Telenor, is committed to lead by example in the area of child online safety and digital literacy.
Digital literacy deficit
“We did a global study on child online safety in 2012 and out of 12 countries we found children in India are in the highest risk category due to a combination of increased access enabled by affordable internet and smartphones, and low resilience with parents and children lacking the knowledge of how to safeguard themselves against different cyber threats,” says Sharad Mehrotra, CEO of Telenor India.
“We responded by launching our Webwise programme, which educates children on how to protect themselves online. We started it in 2014 and we have 17 volunteers who visited 170 schools so far and 35,000 students have benefited from the workshops on cyberbullying and the role of parents in child online safety.”
Parental responsibility
The lack of education on the risks of going online is widespread, particularly in rural areas where, according to Mehrotra, children as young as six are browsing the internet with no parental guidance or supervision. According to a survey conducted in 2014 by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (Assocham), most underage kids on Facebook first got help from their parents to create their accounts. The survey said 75% of the parents of 8-13 year-olds on Facebook are aware of their child signing up for the site and many “initially knowingly allow their children to lie about their age”.
To help parents understand the complexities of going online, Telenor produced a guide book that gives direction to parents on how and why they should talk to their kids about the internet and the importance of creating strong passwords, privacy settings and parental controls.
“As parents, even if we are not tech-savvy, it is our responsibility to talk to children about their internet habits so they feel comfortable to talk to us if they foresee someone trying to harm them,” says Mehrotra. “We need to monitor their activity and have rules around their internet use.”
Improving efforts
Improving child protection online is desperately needed in India, but so is having the right protocol to deal with a crime if it does occur. To help address this, Telenor is looking to team up with Child Helpline India to build capacity of its staff to know what to do if a child becomes a victim online.
“Results from the workshops suggested at least every second child had experienced some sort of cyber-harm,” says Mehrotra. “About half of them had received demeaning or indecent messages, some had been humiliated by public upload of their photos or had rumours spread about them online.
“We are working with staff to understand what kind of scenarios can come up and how to deal with them,” says Mehrotra. “There is a big capacity building element. Staff haven’t dealt with this type of problem before. We are putting together a panel of experts to train them to counsel children and to link it to services for their long term care and rehabilitation.”
Abuse filters
Telenor Group collaborated with the European Commission’s CEO Coalition and Interpol to become the first mobile operator in the world to introduce safety and child sexual abuse filters for mobile phones in all markets they operate in.
“The filters mean any site that is related to known child sexual abuse content is automatically blocked in India,” says Mehrotra. “The message that comes up when a site is blocked contains the number for Child Helpline India. To help sign-post people to this service, we have actually integrated the helpline number in phone SIMs for easy access. There is no way a child can miss it when they look at their phone.”
In order for children and young people to actively participate in the world today, it is critical they are able to take full advantage of ICTs and proactively manage any risks they encounter online. Telenor and its partners are making sure child online safety moves up the agenda so that children and young people in the third largest telecom market in the world can enjoy the internet safely.
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