What can be done to protect children from viewing damaging material on social media, and where does the responsibility lie? Share your views in a short survey.
In early September a suicide video went viral on Tik Tok. It was originally broadcast live on Facebook and it’s believed a coordinated attack from the dark web was behind its appearance on Tik Tok, a social media app popular with children.
The video was originally streamed live on Facebook at the end of August. TikTok’s European director of public policy, Theo Bertram, told the House of Commons Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that the video was used in a “coordinated attack” on the social video app a week after it was recorded.
He added: “We learned that groups operating on the dark web made plans to raid social media platforms, including TikTok, to spread the video across the internet.
"What we saw was a group of users who were repeatedly attempting to upload the video to our platform, and splicing it, editing it, cutting it in different ways.”
Alerts were sent out by schools and parents were told to be more vigilant about what their children were watching.
This latest incident came at a time when young people have been online more because of lockdown and remote learning. , children are thought to have become more vulnerable as they have been spending more time online because of the impact of COVID. The Internet Watch Foundation, for instance, claimed that reports of child abuse images online have increased by almost 50%.
Is what we have in place at the moment, in both schools and at home, enough to protect young people? Where should the main responsibility for safeguarding lie?
BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT is looking at how should children be protected and is enough being done?
You may know that CAS is supported by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
The results from the survey will help inform its engagement with government policy on this subject.
Take part here; https://bcs.researchfeedback.net/CASonlinesafety
