We need action to make the internet safer for kids

Professor Michael Dezuanni, QUT School of Communication and Dr Aleesha Rodriguez, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child

The internet has enhanced children’s lives in many ways. It is a place where children can connect, learn, be entertained, access information, and ultimately, play. But the internet was not designed with children in mind and that is why it can sometimes be an exploitative, risky, and problematic place for the young people in our lives.

The Australian Government’s decision last year to ban children under 16 years of age from creating social media accounts comes from a valid concern from parents, families, and educators. But the ban undermines the reality that children are growing up in a digital world, and we need to recognise that the internet, including social media, will continue to play an important role in children’s lives as they move through childhood, into their teen years and adulthood.

Researchers at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child have produced the Manifesto for a Better Children’s Internet.

The concept of a Children’s Internet can be used by industry, government, educators, parents and carers, and various stakeholders to reflect on how digital products and online content are thought about, made available, designed, sold, regulated, managed, used, and invite children to participate online.

Rather than banning young people’s access to social media platforms, the Australian Government should invest, both financially and socially, in developing Australia’s capacity as a global leader in producing and supporting high-quality online products and services for children and young people.

The recommendations listed in the Principles for a Better Children’s Internet document provide clear guidance on how we, as a society, can take realistic and measured steps to improve and support children’s experiences online.

Rigorous quality standards are needed to ensure ‘made for kids’ products and services are age-appropriate, relevant, and safe for children. But to do this, we need to ask: What does quality look like when we are thinking about children's online experiences, whether that is watching a television program, playing a digital game, or engaging with ed-tech in the classroom? Currently, there are few parameters for how to judge the quality of digital products, services, and experiences that are ‘made for kids’.

Government, industry, educators, researchers, families and children must work together to develop public consensus about high-quality children’s internet products and experiences for children of different ages. And once developed, these quality standards should be endorsed and widely implemented with transparency and accountability to help parents and carers, as well as children, make informed decisions about what is ‘appropriate’, ‘desirable’, and ‘necessary’ to access online.

Through collaboration and consultation, children, their families and their communities must be key stakeholders in the design, decision-making, and delivery of digital products and online experiences. Technology companies tend to move fast with product development so they can test things with the public and have them ‘break things’ so they can iterate and create better products. But when it comes to children’s experiences online, we should put much more effort into ensuring that the products and services that children and young people access are right first-time, before they are put out into the marketplace. We encourage leaders in the tech industry to support and encourage early consultation and co-design practices with children and families and move away from viewing children as testing markets for products and services.

We need laws and policy to help put in place the correct guardrails online so that when young people have experiences of the internet, they are largely positive ones. To do this, decision-making about child-centred policy and design needs to involve children, carers, families, educators and experts. Regulatory guidelines should be developed to oversee when and how consultation with children is appropriate when designing digital products and services. To build a better Children’s Internet requires input and responsiveness from government, industry, families, and wider society; there needs to be fair and equitable responsibility from all stakeholders. A government mechanism such as a Parliamentary Committee should be established to investigate the role of government in creating the conditions for a better Children’s Internet; recognising the relationships between funding models, quality standards, age-appropriate design and consultation, and media literacy.

Media literacy allows children and adults alike to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to critically reflect on and build productive internet experiences. Media literacy includes the ability to successfully use and make media for a range of purposes. Importantly, media literacy is not just a process of critiquing the media, but it also involves understanding how media can be used to improve society, for instance through supporting active digital citizenship.

If we want children to have a positive digital future and to have a positive experience of the internet, they need to develop media literacy skills to be able to critically reflect on their own experiences and to make choices that are positive for themselves and for others in society. Media literacy is a life-long pursuit and is not something that can be attained as a singular set of ‘skills’ because the media constantly evolves, particularly in digital contexts. Both the creation of media and media analysis relies on continual learning. As such, in addition to the development of media literacy curricula, targeted media literacy resources should be developed for schools, and teachers need to be provided with professional learning to support the implementation of media literacy across the curriculum. Parents and carers of young children should be supported to understand how media literacy relates to parenting and the management of digital technology in the home.

The goal of a better Children’s Internet will not be realised unless there is broad agreement among adults that we need to do more to ensure that children have fun, productive, safe, diverse, and ethical internet experiences.

11 February is Safer Internet Day, a global day of action bringing communities, schools, organisations and families from more than 180 countries together to raise awareness of online safety issues and work towards a safer internet.