[Answered] Highlight the online threats to the safety of children. How does the Child Online Safety Toolkit aim to tackle those threats?

The internet can be a dangerous neighborhood for everyone, but children and teens are especially vulnerable. From cyber predators to social media posts that can come back to haunt them later in life, online hazards can have severe, costly, even tragic consequences. The surge in online activity by children becomes apparent as out of India’s 749 million internet users, 232 million are children.

Online threats to the safety of children:

• Cyber-bullying: Cyberbullying often leaves children and teenagers with lowered self-esteem, less interest in school and low academic achievement. They might also feel alone, lonely and isolated.
• Cyber Predators: These days sexual and other predators often stalk children on the internet, taking advantage of their innocence, lack of adult supervision and abusing their trust.
• Posting Private Information: Children do not yet understand social boundaries. They may post personally identifiable information online that should not be out in public.
• Phishing: Phishing is what cyber security professionals call the use of emails that try to trick people into clicking on malicious links or attachments. These can be especially difficult for kids to detect.
• Falling for Scams: Cyber criminals can use sites popular with children to identify potential victims and then promise prizes in return for what they want.

Britain-based NGO 5 Rights has released the Child Online Safety Toolkit with the aim to make the online experience safe for children. The following provisions of the toolkit attempt to tackle these threats:

• The toolkit provides a practical and accessible roadmap to create a digital world where children and young people are safe and fulfilled.
• It builds on existing international agreements and best practices, developed in consultation with international experts from a range of backgrounds.
• As such, any government can use the toolkit as a building block to work out its own culturally specific set of guidelines for online safety.
• This toolkit provides lawmakers with everything they need to step up and respond to their obligation to keep children safe online.

Way forward:

• Guaranteeing online safety is not just about responding to risks and harms; it means actively designing a digital environment that is safe for every child.
• There is a need to spread awareness through alerts and advisories, training of law enforcement agencies, improving cyber forensic facilities etc. are also necessary.