Online Safety is a Major Concern for School Children

The internet is like the web of a spider waiting for food!

Online safety continues to be a major safety threat for all school-going children today. As an educator, I have witnessed a few cases that have ended up in tragedy. In one case, a student whom I had taught all the way from grade eight to grade twelve had to end his life because he was accused of allegedly misbehaving with a girl. The accusations were never substantiated, nor corroborated and it came to light that all this was done by the so-called 'victim' to gain hits on her social networking site. What had begun as a means to gain online popularity ended up in the snuffing of an innocent life. The boy was a decent, well-mannered person and simply could not have done it!

Today, as we step into a virtual world that offers us the fruits of popularity, loads of friends and tonnes of likes, we are driven by the thrill of achieving a status that the physical world has denied us. The vicarious thrill of indulging in forbidden things, taboos, and risque adventure is like a drug that is highly addictive and difficult to shrug off. The internet provides us with opportunities for success that can not be granted in the real world. The thrill of exterminating many enemy soldiers in a virtual war game and the joy of tasting success in the virtual world are driven by the release of feel-good hormones like dopamine and adrenaline. Emily Dickinson rightly stated in her poem Success is counted sweetest, that 'Success is counted By those who ne'er succeed'!

Unfortunately, the games we played in the past have gone out of fashion. Children no longer play outdoor games like police and thief, football, volleyball,  I Spy, Hop-scotch, or climb trees any more. Physical games have an important role in developing not only the physical health of children but also developing social skills, including emotional skills. The development of the values of fair play, camaraderie and sportsmanship, including imbibing the grace of accepting defeat with positivity are missing in a world where in the virtual world there can only be success, victory, and fame. Why would a child want to play a game where there is a chance of defeat when in a virtual world one can engineer a series of successes that transcend the possibility of defeat? The virtual world provided by the internet offers a rather skewed and distorted worldview?

The Covid-19 pandemic accompanied by the lockdowns has exacerbated the situation. Children who were under lockdown were cut off from healthy physical contact and they had to rely on the virtual world to satisfy their need for validation. Validation is what drives us and we will always strive for it because it gives us a sense of worth! The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will affect children emotionally and mentally for years to come. We have still not formulated plans and and steps to address the problems associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. What makes matters worse is the experience of loss, loss of parents and loved ones to the pandemic which has scarred young minds. Young children were forced into circumstances that were unexpected, unnatural and unwarranted!

It is in the context of existing conditions that educators and counsellors are struggling to address the problem of social acceptance, validation and thereof mental health in children. Parents are helpless in counselling their own children, schools are struggling to get back to normalcy, while the threat of another epidemic looms overhead. It is high time that government agencies created a viable online safety act to protect vulnerable school-going children from being sucked into a virtual world that offers an 'escape plan' from all the problems of everyday life! SEL (Social Emotional Learning) programs can help address the problem but then we need to redesign the same to address the issues created by the Covid-19 Pandemic.

In early 2024, the American Senate garnered enough support to pass The Kids Online Safety Act-(KOSA) a major privacy law focused on content moderation for minors. It is a positive step that addresses the problems faced by young children but does not address those faced by older students. KOSA attempts to minimize harms including mental health, addiction, sexual exploitation, and bullying under the age of 17 that may arise from online platforms but then it needs to also consider people above the age of 17. Parents also need to be roped in to make the act successful. An example of why parents need to be roped in can be explained in an anecdote I would like to share. Mr. Rakshit Tandon, a well-known cybersecurity expert recently mentioned a meeting with a parent who proudly told him that his son was a Pro while playing COD. Little did she know that her son was below the prescribed age limit The KOSA bill targets social media websites and applications of 'covered platforms' that include online video games, messaging platforms, and streaming services that are used by minors. 

Some of the positive aspects of the American KOSA bill include:

1. Limiting the ability of others to communicate with minors.

2. Limiting others from viewing minors' personal data.

3. Limiting personalised recommendation systems for minors.

4. Limiting sharing of geolocation data of minors.

The passing of the bill in the American Senate is dependent on whether all parties can come up with a common understanding of the need for such a bill. We in India need to address the problem of online safety for not only children below the age of seventeen but also those who are above the age of seventeen.

Cybersecurity is a major issue today and we need to target not only children below the age of seventeen but also parents who can guide their children to use the internet wisely. The lure of success as offered by the internet is difficult to ignore, and parents and teachers need to address this issue positively.

We have all come across the Blue Whale Challenge and many other online platforms that have offered easy access to success and popularity. What needs to be addressed is that success comes from a lot of hard work. The best things in life come from hard work and success is defined by the hard work one puts in. There are no shortcuts to success in life!

We need to address the concept of success in schools and colleges all over the world, Success in the virtual world does not translate into success in the virtual world. We need to teach parents that success on online platforms does not translate into success in the real world. Unless we address the problems offered by the virtual world we will not be able to address the problems we face in life today. Having a strong safety protocol  and awareness of the dangers of indulging in unrestricted access to dangerous websites on the internet can perhaps help mitigate the problems faced by unlimited access to  questionable internet sites.