How can child safety be ensured online?
- Recently, the Meta CEO apologised publicly for online child safety issues on social media platforms, prompting scrutiny of major tech companies.
Issues with Children’s Safety Online
- Parents and activists globally are demanding the tech companies to take responsibility for children's safety online or provide platforms ‘safe by design’ for children and young users.
- UNICEF's ‘The Metaverse, Extended Reality and Children’ Report highlights that children face significant risks online. These include
- safety concerns such as exposure to graphic sexual content, bullying, sexual harassment and abuse
- Collection of vast amounts of data, including non-verbal behaviour, leading to hyper-personalised profiling, advertising and increased surveillance impacting children’s privacy, security, other rights and freedom.
- Additionally, recent reports have highlighted that children are using AI to create inappropriate content, such as indecent child abuse images.
- Children may also encounter trauma, solicitation, and abuse online, leading to long-lasting psychological effects that extend into their real lives.
Reach of Generative AI
- The Davos World Economic Forum in a paper explained that generative AI brings potential opportunities. These include
- Homework assistance, easy-to-understand explanations of difficult concepts, and personalised learning experiences.
- children can use AI to create art, compose music and write stories and software (with no or low coding skills), fostering creativity.
- Children with disabilities can interface and co-create with digital systems in new ways through text, speech or images.
- However, generative AI could also inadvertently cause harm or society-wide disruptions at the cost of children’s prospects and well-being.
- Children are vulnerable to the risks of mis/disinformation created by Generative AI as their cognitive capacities are still developing.
- There is also a debate regarding the potential effects on young minds due to interaction with chatbots that exhibit a human-like tone.
Measures to Keep Children Safe Online
- Tech companies must prioritise safety by design, following UNICEF's guidance on child-centred AI.
- This includes support for children’s development and well-being, and protecting children’s data and privacy.
- UNICEF recommends that tech companies apply the highest existing data protection standards to children’s data in the metaverse and virtual environments.
- Governments also play a crucial role in regulating online environments to protect children's rights and well-being.
onclusion
- Protecting children online requires collaboration among tech companies, governments and society.
- All the rules that exist in the real world to protect children, should also apply to the digital realm.