Increase Awareness of Supervision for Online Child Protection

With the introduction of the Internet, the abuse of children by unknowns has
expanded exponentially, including sexual abuse and human trafficking.
The COVID-19 pandemic, with lockdowns, families, children and youth are isolated from their
peers, increasing the challenge of keeping children safe online. Internet usage-hours are
increasing, and so is predation, not only from unknowns, but from peers.
Canadian women are more than fifty (50%) of the workforce, while statistically, women
globally are still carrying more than fifty (50%) of the unpaid work in the home (Catalyst,
2020).
Cybertips.ca (Canada’s National Tipline for Reporting the Online Sexual Exploitation of
Children) statistics are: 4.3 million reports of child exploitation from 2014 to 2021; 39% of
luring attempts in the last 2 years were directed at children under 13 years of age; and 1 in 3
luring attempts happened on Instagram, Snapchat, or KIK Messenger (34%) (Cybertips.ca).
Interpol and ECPAT International (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking) have researched
and found: the younger the victim, the more severe the abuse; 84% of images contain explicit
sexual activity; more than 60% of unidentified victims were prepubescent, including infants
and toddlers; 65% of unidentified victims were girls; severe abuse images are likely to feature
boys; and 92% of visible offenders are male (Interpol, 2021).
It is suggested that Internet service providers, social media, and other platforms, have been
doing their best to protect children online, but it is not enough. There is a gap between police,
government, and service provider responsibility/effectiveness for online child safety, and
parental responsibility for online safety of children. In early 2020, “almost half of parents had
not talked to their children about sextortion (46%) or sexting (42%)” and believe these issues
happen “somewhere else” (Public Safety Canada, 2020).
As an example of available resources, Digital Supervision© was developed by Charlene
Doak-Gebauer (Computer Science specialist and Network Administrator in Education) as a
user-friendly method of proactive online child protection to be applied to enable a digitized
supervision of children in domestic and professional environments. The goal of the federal
Canadian charity, Internet Sense First | Premier Sens Internet, is the education of Canadians
regarding Digital Supervision for proactive online child protection (Doak-Gebauer, 2019). Also
in Canada, The RCMP, cypertips.ca, Canada Centre for Child Protection and the Canadian
Red Cross provide online safety learning resources, which are helpful to both youth and
parents.