A non-profit organisation, Techsocietal; the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), Internet Society of Nigeria (ISN), and TikTok, held a workshop for parents and educators on online safety for children.
The workshop, themed: “Digital Safety Conversations with Children/Youth,” was hosted by TechSocietal, to commemorate the Safer Internet Day (SID), celebrated every second Tuesday in February.
The Executive Director, Techsocietal, Mrs Tope Ogundipe, said the aim was to teach them how to engage in digital safety conversations with children.
Ogundipe said the Internet is the new playground; as such there are a lot of things that should be monitored, like the screen time because excessive screen time could be detrimental to children’s development.
“Kids are a priority, according to NCC research; about 79 per cent of Nigerian kids are not safe online. So it is very important that we continue to evolve the strategies, policies, initiatives, programmes that will engage all stakeholders.
“We need to have multi-stakeholders affairs to these issues and drive it down to the grassroots with awareness and education about online safety for children,” Ogundipe said.
According to her, there should be conversations around contact risks, the things that children come across online and about people who contact them.
She said that children should be aware of using privacy settings not to share information with strangers, and should also be educated about their behaviour online and not to bully other kids and know who to talk to if they should see anything that was funny online.
“We should empower them with tools and resources and how to keep them safe online and we should not stop them,” she said.
…there should be conversations around contact risks, the things that children come across online and about people who contact them.
COP materials
Senior Manager, NCC Zonal Office, Lagos, Ms Ijeoma Bassey, said the NCC has organised parenting workshops, and collaborated with NGOs and others for the dissemination of Child Online Protection (COP) materials.
Bassey said NCC has also talked at Parents Teachers Association’s meeting on online protection of children, and urged educators and parents to create a safe space for children; and should anticipate risks and be empowered to face the challenges.
According to her, educators and parents should be observant and engage children to ensure a healthy balance between fun activities online and fun activities offline.
Public Policy Manager, Google, Adewolu Adene, said the denial of access and shutting the gate of online activity of a child is not the answer to a child’s online safety, rather, education, awareness and shared responsibility will help in children’s online safety.
The Chief Executive Officer, Data Science, Nigeria, Dr Olubayo Adekambi, highlighted seven tools to ensure online safety for children.
These include comment filters, account and video privacy, screen time management, safety centre, reporting inappropriate content 13+ functionalities and for you feed to check children.
He said that bad words could hurt a child’s esteem, and TikTok hides, filters could determine what people could put on one’s page to avoid bullying. (NAN)
