The Covid-19 pandemic and the imposed lockdowns have led to a seismic shift in our collective internet use with an uptick in the number of users and time spent online.
A 2022 survey of around 1,000 parents, by the Child Mind Institute supported by Morgan Stanley, found that more than half the number of parents surveyed allowed more screen time during the pandemic.
Placing the onus solely on parents to ensure that children use the internet safely doesn’t sufficiently address the complex nature of online harms nor does it take into account all the actors that play a key role in this.Reducing harms online will require a holistic approach that considers the entire digital safety ecosystem and all the actors in it.
In Singapore, the government passed the Online Safety Bill in November 2022 to address the increasing risks users experience from prevalent online harms. These threats can come from contact with malicious actors, bad or inappropriate conduct by users, and exploitation that arises from unknowingly signing contracts online which open children up to identity thefts and fraud.The Sunlight Alliance for Action set up to tackle online harms had polled 1,000 Singaporeans and found that close to half of respondents have encountered online harms, and yet, most of them were unaware of avenues for seeking help.
Technology will always be central to our lives, but we need a collective approach to ensure that this can improve the quality of our lives. Safety is at its core a social concept and what is safe or unsafe is negotiated across social and cultural contexts. Governments can also effect systemic change by setting national online safety principles and encouraging the tech sector to adopt it in their day-to-day operations.
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