Now Is the Time for Online Safety and Security Measures for the Youth

 ■Now Is the Time for Online Safety and Security Measures for the Youth

I will serve as the chief investigator for the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Telecommunications Task Force for Preparing an Environment for Safe and Secure Internet Use by the Youth.

The Act to Prepare an Online Environment for the Youth requires mobile phone companies and agencies to check for the youth, explain filtering, and implement measures to activate filtering and has been revised to include tablets in the requirements for filtering.

Promotion of the use of filtering is also emphasized in countermeasures against pirated sites. High School Plus allows the partial use of social networking services, and over half of filter users select it.

It is seen as having had a certain effect in response to the need to emphasize both social networking service usage and the guarantee of safety and security.

Smartphone usage rates are 96% for high school students, 58% for middle school students, and 29% for elementary school students (as of 2017). The number of youths who have been harmed through social networking services is showing an increasing trend.

The usage rate of smartphone filtering has remained at 44%. The most frequently cited reason for not using filtering is “proper internet usage by children can be managed without filtering (26%).”

Among children 90% use LINE, 30% use Twitter, and 20% use Instagram. Over 90% of guardians admit that their children use social networking services.

Guardians are interested in and concerned about “smartphone dependency,” “the effect on education and grades,” and “the effect on the body and health.”

Many tend to believe that household rules regarding “usage time” and “spending” are important.

There was also a discussion about permission to bring smartphones to school.

There have been incidents in which everybody uses the device of a child with loose filtering, resulting higher usage fees for these children. It was mentioned that new measures, such as enforcing filtering and increasing literacy, will become needed.

Furthermore, if BYOD (bring your own device) systems, in which students study on their own devices, are to advance, there may be a need to discuss the use of filtering as a prerequisite. As the computerization of education moves forward, online safety measures at school appear to be headed to the nest stage.