CHILDREN’S DIGITAL RIGHTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY: SAFEGUARDS AGAINST HARMFUL CONTENTS

Abstract

The role the internet plays in the lives of children, and the long-term effects of social media has been on the front burner recently with regards to protecting children from injurious contents. Various nations of the world have passed legislations in this regard. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety Bill 2021 is meant to ensure the protection of both adults and children from unwholesome online materials. In the United States, the Children Online Privacy Protection Act of 2000, a federal legislation was geared towards protecting private information related to minors, which are prohibited from access except with parental consent. The legislation restricted the kinds of platforms used for academic instructions for children. Also the 18 US Code Section 2261A which previously provided for online stalking has been amended to incorporate such acts as harassment, injury, and harming or intimating a person online. Various states in the United States have also made various legislative efforts in this regard.  In third world countries like Nigeria the combined provisions of the Child Rights Act of 2003 and the Cyber Crime (Prevention, Prohibition etc) Act 2015 are meant to protect both adults and children from harmful online contents and crimes committed in the cyberspace and to punish offenders. However, the existence of these laws have not had significant effects on safeguarding children from online injury and crimes as more are being subjected to harm on alarming scale around the world each day. There is need to examine the digital rights of children in the present age, and the types of information that might be harmful to children on social media and the entire internet towards devising effective means of protecting children and safeguarding children’s digital rights in the 21st Century.