Children and Smartphones

Role of Smartphone in increasing children’s exposure towards violence pornography and other inappropriate materials.

•  Approximately a million children aged between 8-12 years have Smartphones, forming 25% of the total 2.8 million children Smartphone users.
• There are no parental surveillance's on the mobile phones of about 87% of children.             
• Nearly 40% children enter social networking sites and watches video through their mobile phones.

Recent researches suggested that a huge number of teenagers have used their smartphones to access furtive videos and pictures. So the parents are being alerted to keep an eye on their children’s Smartphone usage.

A new report released recently suggests that only a 13% of the total minor Smartphone users have their phones equipped with surveillance settings.

This can be compared to the 44% homes where the laptops and home computers have parental restrictions where anti-virus software’s are installed in about 84% children’s home computers.

Alerted by ooze in online sex crimes and child abuse related to pornography, the Union asked the Supreme Court that the sites for social networking which includes Google, FaceBook and Twitter will be appealed to have domestic servers in the country so that the government can keep bookmarks on abhorrent contents. A recently posted petition filed by advocate Vijay Panjwani states that the illicit content s that children are going through nowadays are far more violent, graphic, brutal destructive and deviant which has endangered the entire society and even poses risk to the Indian public order.

It also says that most of the crimes committed against children/ girls/women are incited by pornography. The issue to be bothersome about is that the gravity and severity of those images are growing aggressively. Prepubescent children are being raped is a matter of grave concern.

PIL asking to put a ban on those illicit sites and against the deficiency of applicable law comes up for a hearing on April, 2014. The Government told the Supreme Court that legal actions aren’t possible in several numbers of cases and a complete ban on cyberspace pornography in the nation cannot happen.

Due to technological issues, coupled with practical complications a policy, though exists to release directions to close off all the pornographic sites isn’t totally achievable stated the Secretary of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The internet servers of most of these illicit materials are located in the foreign countries where such publications are permissible. A total ban on these sites needs censorship before it is being discharged on the internet.

Although there are commercially accessible filters to check clandestine content, their effectiveness are limited as they can also filter information feasible for medical research, education and more besides making the Net slow. The government informed that these filters can be easily bypassed by using the encryption technology.

The Secretary of Dot said that their part is limited to issue orders for closing off the assistance providers merely after the group supervisor in Cyber Law Division of the Bureau of Information and Electronics Technology orders it to do that.   He/she cannot even do it themselves. The process however envisages that a petition for blocking the website needs to come from a nodal officer of an organization or a court and accusations from no individuals will be honored.

 Usage of Smartphone has now become the life-line of several lives. But alike all other essential things it also has pros and cons. It makes life way better and smooth but immature children can be exploited easily through this. So as it cannot become extinct overnight but the underdeveloped future of our society can be safeguarded. The parents need to take the responsibility to scrutinize their child’s Smartphone. Mobiles should be coming with default filters which can be activated without haste. Remember , precautions have no limits.

@BrownBull