Children and young people experience too little protection in social networks

Many of us use services such as YouTube, Twitch, Instagram or Snapchat every day, and sharing and publishing content has now become the norm. Even if it should only affect a small number of our readers, it is usually only young people aged 13 and over who can actively participate in the daily flow of information in social networks. At least when it comes to laws and terms of use that apply in many places.

Even so, children under 13 continue to romp around in these places, one reason why the non-profit organization Thorn has carried out a study on the safety of these users. The results are appalling, as nine-year-olds can expect sexual interactions on all platforms.

Overall, children aged nine to twelve use Facebook 45 percent of the time, on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok it is around 40 percent and YouTube is used by 78 percent. Almost a quarter of the nine to seventeen-year-olds had already experienced sexual interaction with adults, and 23 percent had a young person on the other end of the line.

It also became clear that children and adolescents rarely turn to their parents in the event of sexual interaction. In 83 percent of the cases, reporting tools from Facebook, YouTube and Co. were used, only 37 percent went to a legal guardian (it was possible that the respondents did both).

If the contact was blocked, then in over 50 percent of the cases it happened that children and adolescents were found again by the same people. Either under a new account or on a different platform. The final interesting insight is that adolescents who feel they belong to the LGBTQ community were more likely to have had such interactions (57 percent versus 46 percent).

Own opinion:

The protection of minors on social platforms is far from perfect. Anyone of us who has already set up an account on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram has found that there are hardly any barriers. The same goes for online tools (like Chatroulette), companies are shirking their responsibility with their terms of use. The only question that remains is how one can better protect this target group without endangering data protection and the use of older people.

Via The Verge