Why are we letting children be preyed upon online?
A few months ago, I had some dog treats delivered to our home. I asked my son, who was 5 years old at the time, where these bones that our dog loves to snack on come from. |
"So the internet has these robots," he began. "Then the robots put bear traps out and hide. When the bears get stuck in the traps, the robots cut the bears open and get the bones out. Then the robots bring the bones to the Wi-Fi and that's how you get dog bones." |
As a parent of a young child who is growing up surrounded by the internet of things, I am frequently shocked at kids' understanding, or lack thereof, of how the online world actually works. |
Know a toddler? Try it for yourself and ask: How does the internet work? |
The robot-dog bone interaction became the inspiration for the opening of Opinion Video's latest short film, which juxtaposes kids' understanding of the online world along with the sometimes harmful images that big tech companies are feeding to children. The dichotomy between innocence and reality highlights the need for increased protection of kids online. |
One problem in trying to make this message land for parents who should be up in arms about how their children are being treated is that the internet is not a physical place or thing. It exists in the cloud, and many of us, despite whistle-blowers and news reports, just can't see the dangers. |
Enter the 5Rights Foundation, a British nonprofit fighting for kids' rights online. The organization created a series of fake toys to help give parents perspective. Advertisements for these toys appear as mid-roll ads in our film. |
 | | 5Rights Foundation |
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Would you buy a Share Bear for your kid? The cuddly bear with a webcam for an eye records your kid's image and thoughts and shares them with marketers. How about Stalkie Talkie, a walkie-talkie that connects your kids to complete strangers? |
Of course you wouldn't buy them for your child. Neither would I. Yet most of us let our kids play with similar technology every time they log on to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. |
Ignoring the problem is as absurd as my son's dog bone origin story. And yet it's normal. |
We hope our video makes you angry. Kids are being preyed upon online in a way that we would never allow in the real world. |
But we may be in a unique moment for making a change. With increasing pressure on Congress to take action following the recent whistle-blower revelations about Facebook, now may be the watershed moment Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has been waiting for. Markey wrote the legislation for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act back in 1998, and he's been trying to update it for years. |
Markey's bill would extend protections to include young teens, ban targeted advertising and establish a "Digital Marketing Bill of Rights" for children. |
The bill now has rare bipartisan support. This is our chance to go some way to fixing this problem. Congress should leap at the opportunity. |
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