Band 6+: Many young children have unsupervised access to the internet and are using the internet to socialise with others. This can lead to a number of dangerous situations which can be threatening for children. What problems do children face when going online without parental supervision? How can these problems be solved?

Communication through the internet became accessible to everyone. Even kids access it and exploit it to communicate with other people. Therefore, it is claimed that childre being unsupervised can be put in danger. The issues which parents may face and ways to tackle them will be discussed in this essay.

One of the problems caused by the unsupervised exploitation of the internet is downloading of harmful files by kids. Many children download games from different sources, but they never assure the safety of them. As a result, they face explicit content such as pornography, which can have detrimental effect on their mental health. Furthermore, children may communicate with strangers who may be willing to blackmail them. These strangers can be pedophiles who might ask for nude pictures of kids or hackers who might ask them to transfer money by blackmailing them with their personal data. For example, group of hackers “Siniy kit” in Russia blackmailed around 100 adolescents and even pressurized some adolescents to commit suicide. Therefore, children may be put in danger if the parents do not oversee their safety in the internet.

Happily, parents can assure whether their child is exploiting the internet in the right way , through different ways. The first method is to have regular conversations about the safe exploitation of the internet, explaining kids potential dangers of it. These conversation can create recognition of this issue by child as well as trust on the parent. Another way to do this is parental control apps. If these apps gave a function recognizing potential dangers, parents can be notified about it immediately. However, parents should not exploit it to supervise their chats with friends as it may make children to seek for ways to disable this function. According to recent research, about 30% of users of “parental control” managed to prevent the communication of their offspring with skammers and pedophiles. This implies that these applications can be really helpful in ensuring the safety of children.

To conclude the issue of the safe internet is acute since the internet users can share explicit content with children as well as pressurize them. However, parents can prevent it by having regular discussions about it and using softwares for indicating these dangers.