How to protect your children from online child exploitation during COVID-19 

The COVID-19 global lockdown has subjected a large number of youth to online abuse and violence. The screen time of kids has increased to a high level because of the dependence of education on online technology and too much leisure time spent on social media, and gaming. The interaction with these online platforms has increased so much that, during the last six months there has been a noticeable change in kids’ behaviors and personality development. In such conditions, the kids belonging to underrepresented communities are subjected to online criticism that has proved to be toxic for their mental health and upbringing. 

The sense of exclusion, divide and hate has increased among youth because of the absence and scarcity of laws and regulations on social media. This has also largely impacted the psychological and socio-economic risk factors at the individual, family, interpersonal and cultural levels. The increased frustration inside the family systems, negligence and ignorance of parents towards their duty of supervising has made children more vulnerable to Online Child Sexual Exploitation (OCSE) as well. 

The lockdown confined families to their homes, so any entertainment has also only taken place at home during this period. Now everyone has a device in their hands, a lot of leisure time, a unique set of ideas to produce content and upload it for the world at no cost. The absence of human content moderators, and reliance upon technology, has allowed predators to upload explicit content on mediums like Youtube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. The less reliable automated systems allowed more time for such content to spread on their platforms.

There has been very little check and balance of sexual exploitation content being uploaded, rather many of the platforms’ algorithms encourage kids to bring out such content as it generates lots of likes, comments, and engagement. This is not just sexually exploiting but also becoming a cause of hate speech and exploitation of underrepresented communities. Traffickers have taken advantage of the situation, by making fake accounts and posting fake jobs on them to reach educational websites and apps to get data that they can use to exploit children online. 

Few bits of Advice for parents 

★ Look out for predators who are trying to trap your child by showing affection and opportunity in online commenting. For example, there are comments like “I love you”, “I can make your life better”, “I’ll make you successful”, and “I’ll protect you” should be an alarming situation for you and point where you need to talk to your child about it. 

★ Be aware of Pop-up ads and scam alerts because they can be a source through which you could lose information that you might not feel is important but it is definitely a source of exploitation for predators. 

★ Always be aware while giving access to the apps you are using. The permission you give for tracking location can be used against your child.

★ Emojis that are mostly used by youngsters can be an opportunity for predators as they can transfer information through emoji without being detected by scanners and moderators.

What should Parents do? 

★ Be aware of what your kids are doing on social media. Take note of whom they are interacting with. You can always check their screen time on each app to track down the potential predators. 

★ Educate your kids about the harms of excessive use of social media and depending on its information. Talk to your kids and converse with them the possible ways of protection from dangerous intentions of strangers. Let them come to their conclusions under your guidance. 

★ Look for other interesting engagements and plays for your children to reduce their screen time. Bring them towards healthy activities organically.

★ Make sure that privacy settings and firewall software turned on to their maximum level on all the devices and apps they are using. Keep the check of age ratings of games, apps, films, and social networks to know if those are suitable for your kid’s age or not. 

★ Use trusted monitoring technology such as Bark to keep your child protected. 

★ Take precautionary measures while handing over the device to your kid. Supervise them while they browse information.

About Protect Us Kids Foundation (PUK)

Protect Us Kids Foundation is a non-profit that focuses on providing resources for youth within rural, underserved and marginalized populations globally; to include the development of critical targeted research of Online Child Sexual Exploitation (OCSE).  Our goal is to not only bridge the digital divide by providing resources to protect youth online, but also leverage cyber research, intelligence, and analysis in an effort to provide relevant and impactful awareness that remains culturally sensitive to the global communities that we serve.