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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 11:26 pm
Time: 11:26 pm
Results for online victimization (children)
1 results foundAuthor: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Title: The Protection of Children Online: Risks Faced by Children Online and Policies to Protect Them Summary: An increasing number of children are now using the Internet. They are starting at a younger age, using a variety of devices and spending more time online. The Internet can be a major channel for their education, creativity and self-expression. However, it also carries a spectrum of risks to which children are more vulnerable than adults. Addressing risks faced by children online is becoming a policy priority for an increasing number of governments. This means facing many complex policy challenges: How to mitigate risks without reducing the opportunities and benefits for children online? How to prevent risks while preserving fundamental values for all Internet users, including the children themselves? How to ensure that policies are proportionate to the problem and do not unsettle the framework conditions that have enabled the Internet economy to flourish? Governments are not alone in their efforts to protect children online. Parents, caregivers, educators, business and civil society can also help children to benefit from the Internet. They too have a responsibility to protect them against risks online. Although some of these issues emerged in the early days of the World Wide Web, they have recently gained policy attention. At the Seoul Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy in June 2008, Ministers called for a collaborative effort by governments, the private sector, civil society and the Internet technical community to build a common understanding of the impact of the Internet on minors and to enhance their protection and support when using the Internet. They also called for increased cross-border co-operation by governments and enforcement authorities with respect to the protection of minors. This report focuses on online risks for children and policies to protect them as Internet users. It examines direct and indirect policy measures available to OECD member and non-member countries to help mitigate risks for children online in order to: • Present and compare existing and planned policy approaches for the protection of children online; • Explore how international co-operation can enhance the protection of minors on the Internet. Three broad categories of online risks for children are considered in this report: i) content and contact risks, including exposure to pornography, cybergrooming and cyberbullying; ii) consumer risks related, for example, to online marketing and fraudulent transactions; and iii) privacy and security risks, including the use of social networks without sufficient understanding of potential long-term consequences. Statistical data about children’s use of the Internet and the prevalence of risks are limited. The data are often fragmented and non-representative and offer few possibilities for comparing studies and countries. In particular, definitions of risks often differ, and survey methodologies vary significantly, making it difficult to compare risk prevalence rates. While the same spectrum of risks is present in all countries, the available data suggest that prevalence rates vary. Moreover, because children’s activities, skills and resilience differ, their interactions with the online environment and the consequences differ as well. While children’s capabilities are likely to increase with age, so can their own risky behavior. Online risks faced by children are many and evolving. Addressing them requires a blend of approaches that include legislative, self- and co-regulatory, technical, awareness and educational measures, as well as positive content provision and child safety zones. In practice, each country operates its own policy mix of characteristics and priorities, which reflects its perception of priorities as well as its culture and style of government. Moreover, policy measures that address different risks and initiatives from various stakeholders at different levels co-exist. This creates policy complexity at national level and policy heterogeneity across countries. Government policies to protect children online are in their infancy. To enhance their efficiency and catch up with the rapid adoption of the Internet by children, governments face three main challenges: • Managing policy complexity through enhanced policy co-ordination, consistency and coherence; • Adopting an evidence-based policy-making approach; • Taking advantage of international co-operation to improve the efficiency of national policy frameworks and foster capacity-building. For policy to protect children online to operate effectively as the sum of its parts, governments should enhance the coherence of their policy measures and tools in collaboration with all stakeholders. Public-private partnerships, for instance, have been a successful way to encourage self- and co-regulation. Policies to protect children online would benefit from efforts to ensure consistency with other important policy objectives, such as the preservation of fundamental rights and maintenance of the framework conditions which have enabled the Internet to become a global open platform for innovation, economic growth and social progress. With some notable exceptions, the impact of national policy frameworks and individual policy measures for the protection of children online is not regularly assessed and performance evaluations are only exceptionally built into policy. A systematic approach to evidence-based policy making is essential to determine policy priorities and maximise the protection afforded by national policy. The policy-making process would benefit from official statistics on children’s use of the Internet and the prevalence of risk. This would require a more consistent approach to definitions, methodologies and indicators. Impact assessments would help address conflicting policy objectives and place greater emphasis on the quantification of benefits and costs. International and regional co-operation is another area for improvement. While international and regional intergovernmental organisations (including, in addition to the OECD, the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, the Council of Europe, the International Telecommunication Union, the Internet Governance Forum and the European Commission) are already involved, co-ordinated international work by governments and other stakeholders to protect children online would also support efforts by governments at national level. Successful international co-operation relies on the involvement of all relevant international stakeholders. The report provides examples of international co-operation at the policy and operational levels. These include international strategic partnerships, capacity building and joint events (e.g. Safer Internet Day) as well as the sharing of successful educational and awareness raising campaigns. However, the organisation of a regular joint international event on child protection online, with the participation of national and international players, would be an effective way to co-ordinate efforts and take advantage of potential synergies. It would offer a way to share best practices among governments, business and civil society, including the research community, with a view to making the lessons learned from field experience available to policy makers. It would also help bridge communities such as policy makers and practitioners in the area of Internet policy, education, development and capacity building, law enforcement, and statistics. Another avenue for international co-operation is the development of more comparable statistics to enable comparisons across countries and to help governments better assess the efficiency of their frameworks. OECD model surveys could, for example, include a module on children’s access to and use of the Internet and on risk prevalence. Significant work would be needed to harmonise age ranges and define risks to determine data collection methodologies (e.g. survey of parents and educators versus survey of children). Details: Paris: OECD Publishing, 2011. 105p. Source: Internet Resource: OECD Economy Papers, No. 179: Accessed July 5, 2011 at: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/5kgcjf71pl28.pdf?expires=1309871644&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=2F467BD4A26D25F5DA1D104555EDFDC4 Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/5kgcjf71pl28.pdf?expires=1309871644&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=2F467BD4A26D25F5DA1D104555EDFDC4 Shelf Number: 121968 Keywords: Computer CrimesCyberbullyingCybercrimesInternet CrimesOnline Victimization (Children)Pornography |