Keeping kids safe online

Australia was a world leader in standing up to the social media giants on publishing online content. But in the vital area of empowering parents to protect their children online we have slipped behind. By James Mathias.

This opinion piece first appeared in the Herald Sun on 15 November.

Among the many unappreciated costs of managing Covid-19 is an alarming increase in the amount of screentime for children.

Even before the pandemic, Australian teenagers were spending an average of more than six hours a day online.

Data from the United States shows the proportion of children considered heavy online users has doubled since the pandemic began. Common sense tells us this same trend is little different in Australia.

The ability of parents to monitor and control their children’s online activity has never been more important. The risks of cyber bullying, seeing unsuitable content such as pornography and gambling, and the ever-present danger of meeting strangers online, are, rightly, matters of parental concern.

A survey by Compass Polling found four in five Australians felt it was safer to leave children unsupervised in the playground than online. The most dangerous place for children now appears to be indoors. The growing question is who should police the emergence of this online playground.

Evidence provided in a report by the Menzies Research Centre, Strengthening Online Safety, shows early exposure to adult content leads to unhealthy addiction, eating disorders and abuse.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that of the 1,000 free and 1,000 top-grossing casino apps on Apple’s App Store globally, 176 were rated appropriate for children aged 4 and above, six were rated appropriate for 9 and above and 71 for consumers 12 and above.

Apple and Google between them control 99 per cent of the mobile operating platforms that we use in our lives and yet they have decided that the age of consent is effectively just 13.

At this age, children can opt out of parental control apps - five years younger than the age at which you can drive a car without parental oversight.

However, the case is different if you are an enterprise customer. Unlike parents, businesses have more control over how their employees use company-issued devices in what is evidently a two-tiered system.

Through enterprise agreements, the big-tech companies have made it relatively easy for Australian businesses to monitor how much time an employee spends on their device, what apps can be installed and what sites they can visit.

Employers can also block employees from installing a VPN (Virtual Private Network). But parents, as private consumers, remain powerless regarding their own child’s online regulation.

The big-tech companies are continuously eliminating third-party competition that threatens the advantage of their own apps. In 2018, Apple removed 11 of the highest-grossing third-party parental control apps from the App Store, conveniently coinciding with the launch of their own ‘Screen Time’.

Competition enables growth and parents need to have choice over the system that regulates their child’s device.

While social media and the ease of having the internet at our fingertips has become a highly addictive pastime, statistics indicate that it is now posing as more of a concern than a convenience. 

The loopholes available which children go through to circumvent current weak restrictions set for them, including the use of a VPN and bypassing age verification, highlight the challenges placed on parents, who they have little control or knowledge of what adolescents are virtually capable of.

The report indicates the overall wellbeing of adolescents has vastly declined since the 1990s, along with alarming increases in obesity, mental illness and suicide.

Every parent should be rightly horrified that suicide has become the leading cause of death in those aged between 15-24.

The report addresses other areas such as social media consumption and its correlation to body dysmorphia, online bullying, the predatory nature of the lowered age of consent and gaming and how it increases school disengagement and poor social outcomes.

Jordan Foster, a cyber safety expert and clinical psychologist, said children are likely to test their boundaries and it was a normal stage in development.

But in the digital age, exploring boundaries may become detrimental if necessary protections are not in place.

The United States, Britain and the European Union have all taken steps to regulate the power that the big-tech companies have over their users, such as enforcing legislation that protects citizens from unlawful conduct, establishing a governing body for digital markets and launching an investigation into the tech giants.

Australia was a world leader in standing up to the social media giants on publishing online content, but in the vital area of empowering parents to protect their children online we have slipped behind.

The effects of online consumption on children pose a real threat to child safety on many levels and urgent government regulatory assistance is required to address these issues.

It still remains unknown what the long-term effects are of technology use by children, let alone the increased use of technology during pandemic lockdowns.