Techsocietal partners  NCC, TikTok on online  safety  for kids

A Non Profit  Organisation, Techsocietal, the Nigeria  Communication Commission  (NCC) Internet Society  Nigeria and TikTok on Tuesday held workshop for parents and educators on online safety for children.

That workshop hosted by TechSocietal is to commemorate the Safer Internet  Day (SID) celebrated every second Tuesday  in February.

This year’s theme is: ‘’Digital Safety Conversations with Children/Youth’’.

The Executive Director,  Techsocietal, Mrs Tope Ogundipe said that the aim was to teach them how to engage digital safety  conversations  with children.

Ogundipe said that the internet was the new playground, as such there were a lot of things that should be monitored.

She said one of such things was the screen time because excessive  screen time  could be detrimental  to children’s development.

‘’Kids are a priority,  according to NCC research, about 79  per cent of Nigerian kids are not safe online.

‘’So it is very important  that we continue  to evolve the strategies, policies, initiatives,  programmes that will engage all stakeholders.

‘’We need to have a multi stakeholders  affairs to this issues and drive it down to the  grassroot with awareness  and  education about online safety for children,” Ogundipe said.

According  to her, we should have conversations  about contact risk , the thing that children  come across online about  people who contact them.c

She said that children should be aware of using  privacy  settings not to share  information with strangers.

Ogundipe  said that children  should  also be educated about their behaviour  online and not to bully other kids and know who to talk to if they should see anything  that was funny online.

‘’We should empower them with tools and resources and how to keep themselves safe online and  we should not  stop them,” she said.

Senior Manager,  NCC Zonal Office, Lagos,  Ms Ijeoma Bassey, said that NCC had organised  parenting workshop, collaborated with NGOs and others for dissemination  of Child Online Protection  (COP) materials.

Bassey said  that NCC had also talked at Parents Teachers Association’s  meeting on online protection of children.

She urged  educators and parents to create a safe space for children; they should  anticipate  risk  and they should  be empowered to face the challenges.

According  to her, educators, parents  should be observant and engage children to ensure a healthy balance  between  fun activities  online and fun activities  offline.

Public Policy Manager, Google, Mr Adewolu Adene,said that denial of access and shutting the gate of online activity  of a child was not the answer  to  a child’s online safety.

Adewolu said that rather education,  awareness and shared responsibility  would help in children’s  online  safety.

The Chief Executive Officer,  Data Science, Nigeria, Dr Olubayo Adekambi highlighted  seven  tools to ensure online safety for  children

Adekanmbi said that there were Comment  filters, Account and Video Privacy, Screen  time management, safety  Centre, reporting  inappropriate  content   –

He said that bad words  could hurt a child’s esteem and TikTok  hides, filters coukd determined  what people could put on ones page to avoid bullying .