475 students benefit from campaign to protect kids online
sharjah — A series of awareness workshops were held across five schools in Sharjah to outline the damaging effects and prevalence of abuse children experience online. A recent survey by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) showed that a quarter of students use social media for five hours or more a day.
In a joint initiative between Sharjah’s child safety campaign and ‘Aqdar’ — Khalifa Empowerment Programme for Students, 475 students participated in the sessions. The workshops covered hacking, piracy, libel, solicitation, cyber-bullying, cyber-harassment, cyber-stalking, as well as exposure to harmful content.
The need for monitoring and mentoring online activities has become greater with statistics showing children’s growing reliance on online use, said organisers.
Hanadi Saleh Al Yafei, department director at the Supreme Council for Family Affairs (SCFA), and head of the organising committee of child safety campaign, said: “The message we are trying to put across is that there are enormous benefits to using the internet, but it is far too easy to become an online victim as well.
“Many children are simply unaware of what dangers they face and in some cases how sophisticated the attempts are to steal their identity or hack into their
The message we are trying to put across is that there are enormous benefits to using the internet, but it is far too easy to become an online victim as well.” Hanadi Saleh Al Yafei, dept director at the Supreme Council for Family Affairs
devices. Whether it is innocence or naivety, we find that although more and more children are using the Internet at a younger age, there is still a severe lack of awareness of the traps that are laid.”
The workshops were highly interactive and the children took part in the discussions, debates and demonstrations with great enthusiasm, he said.
“It was interesting to see how the students reacted to the potential online threats and we gained some useful insights into their opinions. It was very much a twoway process and extremely helpful for us in terms of what the children did and didn’t know and how we can use that to our advantage in subsequent workshops.”
The child safety campaign recently concluded its second phase that was aimed at raising children’s awareness of the concept of child abuse, and empowering them with the means to protect themselves. The campaign recently launched its third phase, focussing on cyber security for children.
reporters@khaleejtimes.com