The internet is simultaneously the most wonderful and harrowing tool created by humanity. Sure, it’s no nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile but you can watch that missile turn humans into goo with a simple internet search.

The fact of the matter is that despite all the best laid plans of internet denizens, there are simply too many terrible people and too many terrible things to police online. While big tech corporations like Meta can try to stem the tide of horrible content, there is simply too much for it and its moderators to police.

This is and should be a concern for parent. However, holding off on giving your child a smartphone is getting tougher by the day. For all of its ills, a smartphone is a useful tool for staying in touch with family but as Anna Collard, SVP for content strategy at KnowBe4 Africa and Kate Farina, founder of BeInTouch report, waiting may be a good idea.

“Recently, I spoke with Jenna (not her real name), a mother of two boys, ages 12 and 9. Sitting across from me, she looked visibly distressed as she recounted a shocking discovery that no parent should ever have to face. Jenna had stumbled upon the browsing history on her older son’s tablet and found disturbing evidence: he had accessed violent pornographic content, including child pornography. The experience was so jarring that both she and her son are now undergoing counseling to process the trauma,” reports Collard.

“The link to this content, Jenna explained, was shared in a WhatsApp group – one that her son and thousands of other kids in the Western Cape belong to. While Jenna considers herself a vigilant parent, she’d recently disabled parental controls, feeling overwhelmed by the settings and trusting in her son’s good judgment,” she adds.

While this sounds like a fringe case, it isn’t. UNICEF reports that 95 percent of learners in Grades 4 to 11 have regular, unfiltered access to the internet. As many as 67 percent of those learners have seen sexual images, 25 percent have added friends to their contact list who they have never met and 18 percent have sent a photo or video of themselves to a person they have never met.

Perhaps most alarming is that UNICEF reports that only 41 percent of learners have received information pertaining to online safety.

A similar study by BeInTouch of the same age group of learners found that 83 percent of learners have a social media account by age 10 with 77 percent reporting they have no parental controls enabled on the device.

“Despite safety measures and age restrictions for many products impacting children, unlike the film industry, social media and big tech remains virtually unregulated. While app stores attempt to enforce a 13-year age limit, this threshold isn’t grounded in child psychology or neuroscience. Instead, it’s driven by U.S. privacy laws, which permits data collection on children aged 13 and up. With young users representing a major profit source for social media platforms, these age limits serve commercial interests rather than child well-being, underscoring social media’s role as a revenue-driven industry,” write Collard and Farina.

Numbers in the machine

That point about users being a major profit source is an important one as it highlights the disconnect that exists between big tech and child safety. More often than not, despite having the relevant capabilities, big social platforms won’t put in measures to protect children until they are forced to do so.

For all its crowing about the advancements of artificial intelligence, those advancements are yet to be employed in making platforms safer for children. TikTok just recently announced it would be testing an algorithm to determine whether users were trying to get around age restrictions but we have to ask, where has that feature been this whole time?

Granted, some of the blame rests on parents who allow their children unrestricted access to the internet on the basis of trust. In the case of Jenna above, her stating that the amount of options she needed to parse was overwhelming is simply a cop-out in our view. We should note that Jenna’s comments aren’t false, security settings can be a complicated affair but one has to question how committed a parent is if browsing a few settings and toggling switches is too much work for them. It’s tantamount to blaming pools for the fact that an unattended child fell into one.

There’s also a risk of your child being the source of a major breach within your home. Not knowing any better, your child could click a link thinking they’re about to receive some Roblox items only for the home network to be breach and mom and dad’s accounts being drained.

There are initiatives that urge parents to reconsider giving their child a smartphone in a bid to limit their use and the use of social media. Again though, smartphones are useful and parents can’t hold out forever.

So what can parents do? Collard and Farina have some advice:

• Enable parental controls,
• Update device software regularly,
• Educating children on digital privacy and the importance of it,
• Password best practices,
• Recognising and avoiding suspicious activity online,
• Teaching critical thinking and mindfulness.

We also recommend getting to know your home router a bit better. Most, if not all, routers allow you to set restrictions on devices. This includes blocking access to websites, blocking internet access entirely between certain times and more. There are also a multitude of apps available to help manage a child’s device.

We also recommend that parents get to know the platforms their children are on. For instance, waving TikTok off as some worthless app may make you blind to the fact that pornography litters the app and its relatively easy to find if you know where to look.

“By taking these steps, families can safeguard not only their children’s emotional well-being but also their digital security and ensure responsible use of technology,” write Collard and Farina.

“Remember that risks don’t necessarily equate to harm if one is aware of them and if they are managed adequately. You wouldn’t give your 11-year-old keys to a car, it’s the same online, as parents, we have to first train and assign safety precautions before letting our kids freely navigate digital spaces without supervision,” the duo adds.

While there is a temptation to be the cool parent who isn’t overbearing, the risks children face online are immense and what they see could change them forever. Get involved in your child’s digital life before they get into trouble. Ultimately, they will thank you for it.

[Image – Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE from Pixabay]