MPs should pass laws to protect our children from harmful online content
Time has come for our legislators to borrow a leaf from their counterparts in the United Kingdom and Canada and enact laws that protect Kenyan children online.
As our children spend their end of year holidays at home, access to harmful online content remains a nightmare for most parents.
This is not a recent phenomenon. Every school holiday comes with this challenge now that Internet is part of our culture. Granted, the Internet is here to stay, and so is technology.
What we need to do as a society is moot ways to protect our children from accessing harmful content through moral, technological, social and legislative safeguards. Much as this is a collective responsibility for all of us, especially parents and guardians, time has come for us to be deliberate as a country.
For instance, can our Parliament create a conducive and facilitative legislative framework to efficiently and effectively regulate online content? Kenyans have raised this concern for far too long but we don’t seem to get a sustainable solution.
The persons who post or host this harmful online content, for instance, need to be held accountable while safeguarding fundamental human rights such as access to information and freedom of expression for adults.
It is very interesting to learn how more established jurisdictions have decided to confront this problem head-on. The United Kingdom, for instance, has recently passed the Online Safety Act 2023, providing for a new regulatory framework which has the general purpose of making the use of Internet services safer for individuals in the country.
To achieve that purpose, this Act, among other things, imposes duties which, in broad terms, require providers of Internet services to identify, mitigate and manage the risks of harm from illegal content and activity, and most important, content and activity that is harmful to children.
The law goes further to sanction Internet service providers to ensure that their services are designed and operated in such a way that a higher standard of protection is provided for children than for adults, even as it calls for protection of users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
Across the Atlantic, The Online Harms Act was introduced in the House of Commons of Canada on February 26, 2024. The law contains a variety of measures to address a range of harmful content online as well as hate speech and hate crimes both online and offline.
To combat harmful content online, the Act creates a regulatory regime to hold social media services accountable for reducing exposure to harmful content on their platforms.
The Act defines harmful content as content that sexually victimises a child or revictimises a survivor, intimate content communicated without consent, content used to bully a child, content that induces a child to harm themselves, content that foments hatred, content that incites violence, and content that incites violent extremism or terrorism.
The introduction of the Act attempts to usher in rigorous online protection for internet users hence protecting vulnerable groups such as children.
It is apparent that what United Kingdom and Canada are doing is to create a safer online world by taking the war to the source: the Internet service providers or the social media companies.
This radical approach will give rise to a robust legislative architecture complete with policies and guidelines that protect children from harmful content in the online space. With the rise of technology and the internet, children have access to a world of information at their fingertips.
While this can be a great resource for learning and entertainment, it can also be a dangerous place parental control notwithstanding.
From cyber bullying to exposure to inappropriate content, policy makers must now take steps to protect children while they are online and one of the most effective ways to do this is by holding the platform owners accountable for the content they carry.
Time has come for our legislators to borrow a leaf from their counterparts in the United Kingdom and Canada and enact laws that protect Kenyan children online. As new technology advancements continue to emerge, there is a clear need for legislation that is technology-sensitive which will hold the internet service providers and social media companies accountable for the content that they carry.
This means that as a country, we need to start interrogating the kind of agreements or protocols that our country has with the Internet service providers and social media companies that are operating in Kenya.
The Departmental Committee for Communication, Information and Innovation in the National Assembly should pick this matter up with urgency.
The writer is a governance and communication consultant. Email: [email protected]
