The holistic approach to child online safety

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 20 May 2009 16:39

Your IT - Home IT

Protecting Children in Cyberspace is the theme of this year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, but will it actually make our kids any safer online?

As the father of two school age kids as well as a (very, very young and good looking) grandfather as well as someone with two decades under my belt as a so-called Internet expert, I am always interested in any debate about child safety online.

From forlorn attempts to use the law to banish online kiddie porn through to voluntary ISP content blocking schemes that leave gaps for paedophiles to explore.

From FBI honeypot traps through to the nonsense of charging teens who text naked pics of themselves with child porn offences.

None of these things have worked, and many would argue none ever will. So how can we keep our kids safe in cyberspace? Well first you have to define the we, which the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) does as being the Internet industry, government policy-makers, teachers, parents and yes even children themselves.

Next you need some kind of global template if any child protection strategy stands any chance of working, which is why the ITU has chosen Protecting Children in Cyberspace as the theme of this year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Day and drafted guidelines for producing just that.

These draft guidelines will be reviewed at the Strategic Dialogue on Safer internet Environment for Children in Tokyo at the start of next month, and the final 'Guidelines on Child Online Protection' will be issued at ITU Telecom World in Geneva during October.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure is confident that "a secure cyberspace for our children will not remain an ideal but will become a reality" thanks to them being prepared in close collaboration with numerous UN agencies and organizations such as UNICRI, INTERPOL, and the European Commission.

So what direction are the guidelines taking and how will they establish a safe and secure cyberworld for future generations? More on the next page...

CONTINUES ON PAGE 2