Safer Internet Day 2022: What is the “Online World in Children’s Homes” like?

On the occasion of the international Safer Internet Day, the CZ.NIC Association published, through its Safer Internet Center project, the results of research aimed at mapping the environment of children’s homes with regard to risky communication online.

Safer Internet Day is celebrated in more than 200 countries around the world on the second Tuesday in February. The coordinator for the Czech Republic is the national Safer Internet Center run by the CZ.NIC Association. Both organizations and individuals can participate in this event, with the motto of the day being “Together for a Better Internet”.

On the occasion of the international Safer Internet Day, the CZ.NIC Association published, through its Safer Internet Center project, the results of research aimed at mapping the environment of children’s homes with regard to risky communication online. The analysis of the data shows that compared to other child social groups, young clients of children’s homes are at a bigger risk in this area. The Safer Internet Center staff also presented the annual statistics of the helpline STOPonline.cz, which received 3,944 reports last year. Its analysis revealed that the number of cases concerning intimate materials that were apparently created and published online by young children themselves (including 10-year-olds), has increased significantly. Complete results of the research of the environment of children’s homes, including the final report, are available at bezpecnenanetu.cz. Detailed information on the annual evaluation of reports submitted to the STOPonline.cz line is available in Kateřina Vokrouhlíková’s blogpost on the CZ.NIC blog.

The “Online world in children’s homes” research was conducted in cooperation with the Center for the Prevention of Risky Virtual Communication at Palacký University in Olomouc (E-safety project) and involved 166 workers of children’s homes and 197 children from all regions of the country. The main purpose of the survey was to find out what preventive measures children’s homes implement, what topics they discuss with children, how the use of the Internet is regulated in children's homes and what risky situations are experienced by children from children’s homes.

The findings show that almost half of the educators surveyed do not regulate access to specific websites in any way, and almost 80 percent of them do not know the children’s passwords to their social media accounts. Nearly 80 percent of educators also reported that children at their workplace have limited access to the Internet during designated hours. The research also showed that 48 percent of children experienced a situation in which they were verbally harmed by someone using the Internet or a mobile phone. Almost a third of the children confirmed that someone had used digital technology to distribute degrading or mocking photographs of them. Another disturbing piece of information is that nearly 20 percent of children from children’s homes perform sexting by exchanging their own intimate photos, with 17 percent of them being forced to do so. One in six respondents said that someone on the Internet had purchased data or mobile recharge for them; 2 percent of this group obtained it in exchange for their photos or videos, including intimate ones. Further facts on these and other topics of research are mentioned in the final report published at bezpecnenanetu.cz.

“Unfortunately, we were not pleased with the results of the research, because it is clear that children in children’s homes are at a greater risk than children from other social groups. Within our Safer Internet Centrum project alone, several children’s homes and dozens of schools have been trained in the past. We continue to offer children’s homes free lectures on risky behavior on the Internet, cyberbullying or the use of social networks. We have recently introduced a service for heads of children’s homes, who can now order a free test of the vulnerability of their website from us,” says Martin Kožíšek, the main coordinator of the Safer Internet Center project.

The STOPonline.cz line, aimed at addressing illegal content on the Internet, received a total of 3,944 reports last year, of which 500 contained child pornography, 154 child erotica and 124 child nudity. Thanks to the ever-improving analytical work of operators, a total of 934 malicious websites were added to the international ICCAM database. 14 incidents were handed over to the Police of the Czech Republic for further investigation and a total of 91 cases were handed over for further investigation to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), thanks to which illegal content is being removed very effectively.

“In recent months, we have seen a significant rise in reports of cases regarding intimate content created by children of an increasingly younger age, with even ten-year-olds being no exception. We’re also getting more calls from parents who discover and report such content on their children’s devices. Here I would like to point out that parents are often those who create such content themselves. These are materials with child nudity taken, for example, during holidays. It is therefore our goal to increase preventive activities not only towards children, but also towards parents, so that they do not create and publish this sensitive content on the Internet,” comments Kateřina Vokrouhlíková, security analyst of the STOPonline.cz line.

During this year, Safer Internet Center will participate, among other things, in the new season of the successful series #martyisdead or in new episodes of the popular children’s series Alice in GIFland, which viewers could watch on the ČT :D channel. It will also create educational videos focusing on risky phenomena on the Internet, hold a number of lectures in schools and organize training courses for parents and the professional public.

More information about the activities of the Safer Internet Center or the above-mentioned research is available at bezpecnenanetu.cz. There is more information about the annual statistics of the STOPonline.cz line in the Kateřina Vokrouhlíková’s blogpost at blog.nic.cz. It is possible to report illegal content on the Internet through a form at https://stoponline.cz/. You may submit a request for a website scan in order to reveal its potential vulnerabilities at https://skenerwebu.cz/ (for children’s homes and schools, this service is offered free of charge).