How to limit child exposure to Internet vice

• Educate children on how to use the Internet positively and to never give personal information such as contact details, parents’ work details or the name and location of their school without parents’ consent.
• Check with your service provider for age-appropriate parental control devices.
• Bookmark websites that are child friendly and seek help from Internet providers on how to block other unfriendly sites.
• Know children’s friends and who they interact with while online.
• Teach children about the dangers of accepting someone they don’t know in social networks and chat rooms and never to reply to a suspicious looking email or click on a web link contained in one.

Entertainment for children has kept pace with the global technological revolution.

As more Kenyan children become exposed to the Internet, they run the risk of being exposed to vices such as pornography, sexual perversion and crime.

Google is the most visited site in Kenya, but there are other social sites that provide information and networking.

Alexa.com, a website information company, ranks Facebook as the fourth most popular site.

Even with the myriad of benefits that come with the Internet, children’s safety is not guaranteed even while they may surf the web from the comfort of their homes.

Contrary to parents’ expectations, most children do not use the internet widely as a learning tool.

“Child safety is a big concern in Kenya,” said Mr Alex Gakuru, the chairman of ICT Consumers Association of Kenya.

Globally, alarm over children’s safety while venturing into cyberspace is growing.

This year’s World Telecommunication and Information Society Day was dedicated to protecting children in cyberspace.

According to a recent global Internet survey, over 60 per cent of children and teenagers talk in chat rooms on a daily basis.

Three in four children online are willing to share personal information about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services.

The survey says that the largest consumer of Internet pornography is in the 35 to 49 age group, while the average age of the first Internet exposure to pornography is 11 years.

Up to 90 per cent of eight to 16 year olds watch pornography online.

These findings prompted the International Telecommunications Union, the UN telecoms agency, to launch a blueprint for online child protection last month.

The agency advocates a blend of government-led enforcement, parental control, education and technical controls or filters to tackle issues such as online sexual predators, bullying and temptations of online commerce.