Protecting children against dark net dangers

With children incrementally accessing the internet and venturing into the Dark Net, educating, enabling and guiding children — especially tweens and teens — to use the internet beneficially and safely has become an important parental obligation, writes Poornima Dilip, Cynthia John & Mini P. The all-pervasive internet is a blessing which can transform into a curse if not used safely and sensibly. While the worldwide web has made a vast ocean of information, real-time communication and a plethora of services unimaginable in the 20th century accessible, it has a dangerous dark underside. Over the past decade in particular the dark net has parallelly transformed into a hyperactive criminal cyberspace in which a frenzy of financial frauds, identity theft, online sexual abuse, child pornography, among other heinous crimes have become commonplace. According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), at least one cybercrime is reported every 10 minutes countrywide. And within the exponentially growing number of internet users countrywide — 658 million currently — children, especially adolescents, most vulnerable to cybercrimes. With teenage children being permitted easier access to the internet by parents, especially after the Covid pandemic prompted a shift to online learning, they are increasingly becoming easy targets of online bullies, sexual predators, scamsters and sundry perverts in online chat rooms, digital games zones and social media platforms. A recent survey by the popular US-based anti-virus software company McAfee, found that Indian children have the highest exposure to ‘online risks’ among 12,000 children surveyed from ten countries including the US, UK, and Mexico. The study titled Life Behind the Screens of Parents, Tweens and Teens, also noted that 90 percent of adolescents aged 15-16 years own/or have easy access to a smartphone or mobile device. It also revealed that 59 percent of tweens/teens hide their online activity from parents. With children incrementally accessing the internet and venturing into the Dark Net, it’s unsurprising that there’s a 400 percent increase in recorded cybercrimes committed against children — 842 in 2020 cf. 164 in 2019. Most of them relate to publishing and/or transmitting online materials depicting children in perverse sexual activity. According to the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), the Top 5 states reporting cybercrimes against children in 2020-21: Uttar Pradesh (170), Karnataka (144), Maharashtra (137), Kerala (107) and Odisha (71). Cybercrimes apart, the huge spurt in access to internet and social media is playing havoc with children’s mental health. Cases of children suffering digital addiction, anxiety and depression are rising exponentially. Recently, a local government in Seattle (USA) filed a novel lawsuit against hi-tech transnational ICT giants Meta, Google and others which own social media platforms TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, faulting them for damaging children’s mental health and well-being. Therefore in these troubled times, educating, enabling and guiding children — especially tweens and teens — to use the internet safely and wisely has become an important parental obligation. In the pages following, we provide specially curated information about common online dangers, their damaging impact and ways and…