Twenty years after the international community expanded the frontiers of protection for children, child carers and officialdom are slowly venturing into uncharted territory: cyberspace.

Since November 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has gradually been adopted by 193 countries in a bid to protect children from abuse.

But child welfare groups and decision-makers are now paying close attention to the exponential growth of the parallel digital world, where children can roam out of sight of overwhelmed parents and run the risk of abuse in a global legal limbo.

This month, the UN's International Telecommunications Union launched a blueprint for child online protection, drawn up jointly by welfare groups, regulators, law enforcement officials and the industry, that will be updated every year.

"Children have become digital citizens in an online world that has no borders," explained Nenita La Rose, executive director of Child Helpline International, a network of telephone helplines for youngsters in 160 nations, and one of the authors.

Some 1.5 billion people now go online, 7500 times more than a just over a decade ago, according to the ITU.

The picture of child use is fragmented, but the internet is now an essential tool in schools in industralised nations.

Studies cited by the ITU indicated that 93 percent of US teenagers use the Internet, while in South Korea, 30 percent of under-18s spend at least two hours a day online.

"Based on our available data we're looking at any child above the age of six, who can just about read and write, who is going online even in a relatively low broadband penetration country like Malaysia," said Malaysian telecoms regulator Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi.

'I was a digital immigrant'

Driven by their instinctive curiosity and openness, the younger generations lead the way as "the early adapters of new technology", leaving their elders behind, as La Rose discovered one evening with her daughter.

"I felt I was in a digital roller coaster. She was on Facebook, then the Blackberry was buzzing, then she was texting for two hours at a stretch."

"And then I got up, I felt exhausted and realised I was a digital immigrant; it was a completely different world," she sighed.

The "Web 2.0" generation of interactive internet content brought a "paradigm shift," explained Rachel O'Connell, chief security officer for social networking site Bebo, as well as a new dimension to adolescent bullying.

"Cyberbullying is often committed by their friends and they are also sometimes the bullies, so that has fundamentally altered how we perceive the risks," she explained.

Bebo carries "safety" advice and links aimed at users of all ages. O'Connell even believes social services should consider round-the-clock online help.

Although children are savvy with technology and feel emboldened, La Rose pointed out that they remain naive and need the same protection sitting at home with their computer as they might walking a city street.

AFP

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