By Dimo wa Moraswi Sekele
As a concerned citizen, a brother to a teen sister, an uncle to a lot of young girls and boys I believe our silence or rather pretence that our kids are safe on the net deserve prosecution, in an era where a kid as young as 10 years of age can access the internet and browse whatever they want, it puzzles me why ICASA is not prioritizing their safety.
Perhaps a criminal case of Child pornography should be laid against the service providers because of their lack of measures to filter out X rated material from being accessed by minors. In a study conducted in Gauteng it was found that out of 2 890 secondary school learners, 57.1% of them have been exposed to pornographic material. What saddens me most is that 48.8% of this learners continue to intentionally search for the pornographic materials and 14.6% of this kids do so on a daily basis, this is mainly due to the addictive nature of this material and the sexual curiosity of teenagers.
I am not eroding the responsibility of parents towards monitoring and setting measures to ensure their kids are not exposed to this type of content but want to emphasize the service provider’s role in this matter, beyond the software filtering capabilities, the active parenting and other measures available to the parents perhaps the most effective method will be network blocking of their devices from accessing pornographic content.
The seriousness of this issue suggests urgent action be taken, as described in the South African Child protection register Sexual Abuse is Non-contact-Abuse: Exhibitionism, voyeurism, suggestive behaviour or Exposure to Pornographic materials (for a complete list/description of sexual abuse please refer to Child protection services) in this case the mobile phones are a means of exposure to this type of content, I would like to believe a very sober approach will be to charge the mobile network providers for exposing kids to this materials.
The only way to counter this form of sexual abuse a proactive rather than reactive approach is needed. I believe the department of social development, under the leadership of Mme Bathibile Dhlamini will contemplate and address this issue for the materialisation of a child friendly internet.
From where I am standing the network filtering by the network service providers is the only far reaching solution that can be implemented only if they are willing and realize the seriousness of this matter. The available public wifi’s should as a matter of urgency stiffen their filtering capabilities to ensure our kids grow up as normal and free from pornographic material as possible.
I hope this appeal can reach the hearts of parents raising modern technologically savvy kids, to apply pressure if necessary to the people who are entrusted with protecting our kids and the law makers to make amends where necessary.
ICASA,MTNSA,VODACOM,CELL C,TELKOM MOBILE.
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