A report released by UNICEF recently, titled “Keeping children safe and empowered online: A study on Sri Lanka’s digital landscape”, indicates that 46.3% of some 5,000 children polled had communicated with strangers online, over 15% had shared their private information with strangers, while 28% had met them in person, 18.3% of who had done so without informing family or friends.
The report points out that around 27.9% of children online had met people they had first met online. Another 25.2% of online-IT users anticipated meeting in person in the future. This user group was composed of more boys than girls.
Although the study did not probe deeper into the ages of those individuals the children had met up with, most of those who reported having met someone indicated that these people fell into the category of someone they had befriended, or someone related to a job offer or social activity, like a club or organization, rather than a person for a prospective romantic relationship.
Of the children who had physically met online-strangers, 18.3% boys and girls had done so without informing anyone, and another 36.3% had only informed a friend, underscoring the degree of risk these children were being exposed to. According to the report, a substantial proportion of user children with internet access are engaged in what it calls risky behaviour. Exacerbating this is an alarming lack of awareness with respect to privacy.
Privacy settings
Nearly one in four boys and one in three girls were not at all aware of privacy settings for their online accounts. Around, 8% did not know how to change privacy settings. However, there was another group of online-users, 32.2% of boys and 33.1% of girls, who were aware of privacy settings, but did not want to set them up. All these children are exposed to potential online threats.
One in 10 children (a considerably higher percentage of boys) admitted that they had sent/uploaded content inappropriate for their age, which included photos and videos. The proportion of such children increased slightly from Grades 6-9 to the A/L, but the percentage of girls remained low throughout (about 3%).
Some 40% of the online children polled have admitted to sharing photos including personal photos as well as personal information with strangers, in addition to accepting chat requests from people they had not encountered before.
“Though this study did not look into the type of strangers that children interacted with, or the nature of their interactions, such behaviour can expose children to sexual predators or harmful online communities. These interactions could have been between children or adults, but this was not verified in this research.
Unethical behaviour
Furthermore, children admitted to sharing their own photos with strangers. These findings are in line with the harmful and often illegal online activities described in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) guideline”, said the report.
The study also reveals that some children have a tendency to engage in unethical behaviour online. “Nearly a quarter of online IT users admitted to inappropriate conduct, such as, lying, sharing false information, sending messages that could hurt someone else, or admitted to using others’ passwords to log into their accounts. Such activities constituted unethical and unlawful behaviour.”
Among the 11-18 year age group, 67.6% of the boys polled were online, while only 33.1% of girls had access to the internet. Regional variances, as highlighted in the report, show that 67.8% of respondents from urban areas were online users, compared to 47.1% from rural locations and just 39.3% from plantation areas.
A majority of children are getting online without adult supervision. According to the study 53.6% of child internet users were ‘self-taught’ about the internet, compared to the 16.5% who had been taught by their parents. With an estimated 6.7 million internet users in Sri Lanka in 2018 representing 32% of the total population, a rise from 4 million in 2015, internet usage is growing across all age groups.
Yet, while 28.3% of people in Sri Lanka are “Computer literate”, this differs substantially by age, rising to 60.7% of 15-19 year olds compared to just 19.9% of 40-49 year olds. This represents a rise in overall computer literacy, across all age groups since the report data was collected in 2015.”
Children are an invaluable asset to a nation, unfortunately, the incidents referred to above demonstrate that we are unable to protect that asset. The beautiful world of the child is enveloped by dark clouds created by strangers.