Children's Day 2022: It’s time we talked about children’s online safety

As a parent to an 8-year-old studying in a city school, Shalu Mishra Agarwal worries about what her child might come across on the internet. "When I, as an adult, get distracted by pop-up ads online, it always concerns me about the kind of ads and sites that my child is exposed to," says the resident of Mumbai's Malad. "My child's picture, roll number, address, division, audio-visual content for homework were all there on the digital platforms of the school. The possibilities of such data being misused on social media by opportunists to cause harm to my child and my family really bothered me and sharing the information made me uncomfortable," she adds.

With Covid-19 necessitating the use of digital platforms for education across schools and colleges, there has been a multi-fold increase in students below the age of 18, parents and educators accessing classes through the likes of Zoom, Google Meet, Skype. The increased access to personal smartphones and internet has exposed children to potential threats of the digital world such as data leaks, cyber bullying, cyber stalking and other serious cyber crimes leading to harmful physical and psychological impact. Agarwal's fears echo the concerns of many parents who are bothered by their child's increased screen time, but are helpless in the face of changes brought in by the pandemic.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau 2020, a total of 1102 cyber crimes against children were recorded in India, a spike from 305 cases in 2019; of these, 207 cases were reported from Maharashtra. In the state, cyber pornography/hosting or publishing obscene sexual materials depicting children and cyber bullying or stalking emerged as the major crimes with 123 and 69 cases registered under each. In Mumbai, 11 cases of cyber pornography were recorded in 2020 as compared to two in 2019. Similarly, 105 cases of cyber bullying and stalking of women, children were identified in 2020.

In July 2021, reports of information leak from the students' databases through Education Information Management System surfaced from Tamil Nadu. According to the New Indian Express, data of Class X and XII were sold to colleges and education consultancies via officials in the education department. In addition to department officials, private traders like ‘Shastri Nagar Charkya Puri' reportedly sold state specific databases such as ‘Bihar Student Database' and ‘Nagaland Student Database' for Rs 299 on Amazon, as revealed by Ukhrul Times and Nagaland Express in June 2021. These databases containing students' personal information such as name, mobile number, school name, addresses and family name could be easily accessed online by those looking to profit from such sensitive information.

According to Deepika Nandagudi Srinivasa from the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), "The collected information can leave several students vulnerable to fraud and identity theft as individuals do not change their personal information, especially email addresses and phone numbers, over such a short period."

In addition to online harassment and privacy related risks, child sexual abuse and internet addiction, depending on the accessibility and demographics of the children, are also major threats that compromise child safety in the virtual world. According to ‘Cyber Safety of Children during Covid-19 and Beyond' policy brief by Child Rights and You, a not-for-profit organisation advocating for child rights, the National Human Rights Commission has highlighted a 120 percent increase in the demand for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) - visual or depiction of a child engaged in (real or simulated) sexual display, act or performance - during the Covid-19 lockdown. The report also mentions that in the year 2020, India received around 25,000 reports regarding the use and circulation of CSAM from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, an agency that helps tracking websites that contain CSAM.

Impact on a child's mind and body

"There are times when he gets aggressive and loses patience when he is not able to access the phone due to technical difficulties or other problems. This is happening to many kids and they are becoming addicted to the apps to interact with their cousins and friends because they are not able to meet offline these days," says Agarwal.

In the absence of real life interactions and friends to spend time with, digital tools and online games have become a source of communication and entertainment, having an impact on their everyday behaviour. According to Dr Sapna Bangar, psychiatrist and head of MPower Foundation, excessive online activity leads to behavioural issues in children like temper tantrums, inattention and hyperactivity, being easily bored, restriction in interests and lack of imagination. It also causes a gap in social skills such as maintaining eye contact, making small talk, sharing interests, having a to and fro conversation and taking turns overall paradoxically causing social isolation.

Moreover, a constant check on online chat groups, social media reels, posts and spaces, further makes them vulnerable to cyber bullying and has an influence on their sense of self identity and about social realities. "Children lack the maturity sometimes to put things into perspective and take things at face value. Children and teenagers are growing up being hyper connected with others where they are being bombarded about other people's personal lives. It is not a wonder that they are constantly comparing themselves with others, which leads to anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, inattention, body image issues and low self-esteem," says Bangar.

The impact of cyber bullying has a long term impact on the mental health of children, which often spills in to their adulthood. Depending on the severity of the incidents, Bangar explains, there are various factors which may determine the extent of damage done - like how long the child was subjected to bullying, were the insults generic or child-specific and what kind of support did the child receive.

Puja Marwaha, chief executive officer of CRY, highlights the incidents during the pandemic when the information of children, who lost their parents to Covid-19 or were abandoned, were posted online across social media with hashtags for donations and adoption appeals.

"These activities led to labelling and stigmatising of children who have been orphaned during this pandemic. This could lead to long term emotional consequences for children; and risked children's safety as the identifiers might enable traffickers and other perpetrators to get easy access to already vulnerable children," says Marwaha.

Are existing laws sufficient to deal with contemporary digital challenges?

While the term ‘cyber bullying' is not defined either under the IT Act or the Indian Penal Code (IPC), it can be addressed under section 507 of the IPC, which penalises the act of frightening a person anonymously on the internet or social media and threatening the person to do something without their will. Section 354D of the IPC addresses cyber stalking and provides penalty for monitoring an individual's day-to-day activities on the internet without their knowledge with an intention to cause harm or to hurt them. However, these laws do not mention ‘children' or any defined age group to address cases specific to minors.

When it comes to child sexual abuse and sexual harassment, according to section 67B of the IT act, publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act in electronic form or facilitates online abuse of children shall be punished with imprisonment up to five years and a fine extending up to ten lakh rupees. The penalties may increase for repeated offenders. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 (POCSO) criminalises child sexual abuse and pornography, including online methods, under sections 11, 12 and 13 of the act.

According to Srinivasa, the current provisions of the IT Act and POCSO are insufficient vis-a-vis data breaches as current laws do not address questions such as how personal data ought to be processed, managed, stored or collected. She further explains that the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 (SPDR), which lays down practices and procedures designed to secure electronic data and personal information from unauthorised access, disclosure damage and other kinds of data exploitation, falls short of highlighting how minors' personal data needs to be handled.

India is a signatory to the United Nations Charter on the Rights of the Child, which in its Article 16 says that children and young people have the right to privacy just like adults do and that no child should be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference in their privacy, family, home, or correspondence. In 2017, the Supreme Court of India (SC) in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India upheld right to privacy as a fundamental right and in 2018, the SC highlighted the necessary requirement of consent of parents/guardians for enrolment of children under the Aadhaar scheme.

While the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2021 highlights data protection of children in terms of usage and consent, Srinivasa notes that the bill does not discuss data security practices at length and is not as comprehensive as the European Union's law on data protection and privacy, General Data Protection Regulation and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 1974 that governs students' educational data in the United States.

What do experts recommend?

According to Siddharth Pillai, cofounder and director of Aarambh India, a Mumbai-based organisation working to safeguard children from sexual offences online, the prevention of and response to online dangers requires multi-layered strategies, including the participation of the state, policy makers, legal experts, online platforms, the internet service providers and institutions that work with children. These strategies, including awareness and digital literacy, must cater to the needs of students from diverse social and economic backgrounds, including Dalits, Muslims, queer children and other historically marginalised communities.

"The internet is not a monolith and neither are children. Different groups of children access the internet differently. While many issues are common to all children, children with high quality connections, children with slow connections, they have differing experiences and face different risks, which need to be addressed with need-based interventions," says Pillai.

Both Pillai and Marwaha stress on the limited knowledge and assessment among educational institutions and parents about the risks that children are exposed to online. When asked whether the school had conducted any kind of session for the parents and their wards regarding online safety, Agarwal said that there was no such effort made from the institution's side.

"The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) has a crucial role in facilitating awareness programmes in order to guide the caregivers. This will help in addressing the gaps in legislative and policy measures on several cyber safety issues such as cyberbullying, sexting (exchanging text messages with sexual overtones via online platforms) among peers and categorisation of self-generated images as CSAM," says Marwaha.

Srinivasa recommends educational institutions must begin by conducting a Privacy Impact Assessment to prevent potential risks to students' databases. "In addition, governments on both - the state and national levels - must set up mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency of education departments and school management boards. These measures would go a long way in preventing mass data breaches of students," she adds.