Harmful content children are exposed to on internet

When the government shut learning institutions to tame the spread of Covid-19 and schools began to offer online classes, Mr Fredrick Wandabwa bought his 13-year-old daughter a smart phone to facilitate her learning from home.

Wary of the many perils that abound on the internet, he did what many parents don’t bother to do with their children’s gadgets – installed an app that enables him to monitor every single thing that his teenage daughter does with her phone.

 Since he is the phone’s administrator, the app, Google Family Link, notifies him each time she tries to download any material, whether a document or photograph, a notification he either approves or declines after going through the material.

If she tries to access a link with adult content, the phone immediately goes off. Moreover, this father can access his daughter’s screen anytime, which enables him to monitor her chats, phone calls, text messages, even photos that she exchanges with friends.

Negative impact

This is not all, aware of the negative psychological impact that comes with too much screen time, Mr Wandabwa is also careful to limit the time his daughter spends on her phone  —  he has programmed it to go off at 11pm and on at 6am and then off again at 1pm and on again at 4pm.

The dangers that abound on the internet are many, and children are especially vulnerable. Each time a child logs on, he or she opens a doorway for adults that prey on children, paedophiles on the prowl in the web, in search of children to groom, not to mention the tons of adult content out there, which often makes its way to channels that market themselves as child-friendly.

Two weeks ago, Ms Agnes Kamau’s 10-year-old son told her that he had been getting “bad” messages on his tablet every time she switched it on.

Alarmed, she took the device switched it on and off, only for a message with a profile picture of a half-naked white woman to pop up accompanied by a message, “Hi darling, want to be friends?” She was horrified. 

She had bought her son the device in March since his school, like many others, was conducting classes through video conferencing app, Zoom. She had been careful to allow her son to only download child-friendly apps, therefore she was perturbed.

YouTube Kids

 Thinking about it, the most recent app she had allowed him to download was YouTube Kids, which features content specifically tailored for children under 13, and which has parental control features.

A quick search online told her that the app was not as safe as she had thought. For instance, there had been reports of disturbing videos slipping through the child filters in place and making their way to the app.

At first glance, they were innocent-looking cartoon videos, but on looking closer, the manipulated videos showed cartoon characters engaging in disturbing or lewd acts – for instance, there was one of the popular cartoon character Peppa Pig drinking bleach and another of PAW Patrol characters in a strip club.

Yet another was that of Spiderman urinating on Elsa, a character in the animation Frozen, not to mention profanity set to nursery school rhymes.

With schools closed, Kenya’s children, like others all over the world, are spending more time playing online video games, but even those tailor-made for them are not entirely safe either.

Take Roblox for instance, a popular online video game with an age rating of seven and above – it is essentially an app that allows you to create video games and also play those created by other people, hence its popularity.

Though it filters games for inappropriate images and obscene language, it allows those with themes such as murder and horror. For instance, a user created a game which involved players shooting one another in head or stabbing one another with knives until they died.

But this is just a tip of the harmful content children are exposed to on the internet - they are also at risk of identity theft or being lured into criminal and terrorist groups besides being initiated into pornography.  Then there is bullying among children.

Many pitfalls

The internet and its many pitfalls, says cybersecurity expert Anthony Muiyuro, is here to stay, therefore parents and their children have no other option than to learn how to safely navigate this double-edged sword.

The anonymity of the internet, he points out, makes it possible for adults to pose as children and lure them into inappropriate relationships, or even face-to-face meetings after gaining their trust, which makes it even more important for parents to constantly monitor children’s activities online and to continuously teach them about how to be safe when online.

He says some free to download apps come with attached risks and are more likely to elicit pop-ups that direct the user to other sites whose authenticity cannot be verified.

 To keep your child safe online, he advises installing apps such as Google Family Link, a tool that enables you to manage, control and monitor your child’s online activities, and which can be installed on both Android and iPhones.

There is also Apple Screen Time, which allows parents to manage their child’s iPad or iPhone wherever they are, as well as Qustodio, which works with Android phones.

 With it, you are able to manage your child’s phone usage and even determine how much time he spends on the phone besides blocking access to the phone. Others are Family Time Parental Control, OurPact, as well as Kaspersky Safe Kids.

Besides this, Mr Muiyuro advises using two-factor authentication for your children’s social media, linking them to the guardian’s email account, in which one provides two different authentication elements to verify that they are indeed the user.

For video games, it makes sense to open the account yourself just in case your child is tempted to inflate his age, which then makes it possible for him to access games with content that targets older children

But restricting your child’s access to the internet or monitoring what they do with it is not enough, Ms Janet Simiyu, a psychologist, points out. Your child needs to understand why you have put the restrictions in place and why he should take the same precautions even when you are not looking.

[email protected]