social-media

Social Media Applications for Children and Are They Safe?

The children widely use social media applications all over the globe and in fact, they know to use their socials better than the adults. Since children are still in

The children widely use social media applications all over the globe and in fact, they know to use their socials better than the adults. Since children are still in the developing stage, they are quick to learn new technologies and use them efficiently. The Internet provides a window of opportunity for children to learn many things, especially in the times of the pandemic (COVID-19) the screen time has been increased tremendously all over the world.

But even in regular times, studies have shown that children use devices and applications more than any adult, they even own their own Mobile app development phone, which increases access to the Internet. Reports have shown that children aged 6 to 10 years have a smartphone of their own, and it is likely to grow year on year.

On average children spend around 5 hours on social media platforms and the Internet daily, 75 per cent use the Internet for messaging purposes. The research has also shown that about 72 per cent of the children dedicate to gaming, and roughly 60 per cent use social media applications such as Facebook and Instagram.

The trendiest application among children is Youtube, followed by other social apps such as Snapchat and Tiktok. Other than socials children also spend most of the time playing online games on the Internet.

Many applications, including Youtube, protect the children from accessing certain types of content by using filters, parental guidance, and feedback but these great organizations also admit that not every content is manually reviewed.

How is Safety on Social Media Now?

The biggest problem in children using the social media application is child exploitation and exposure to irrelevant content. If you think it won’t happen on more prominent platforms like Facebook and Snapchat, then you are absolutely incorrect, and studies show that these two applications are likely to cause a problem for children.

The Facebook has been taking several steps to protect children that use the application; the Facebook’s safety head has told that they are investing a lot of money in inventing sophisticated and robust solutions to protect children from any harm. Also, introducing photo matching and video matching technology to remove all the unnecessary and harmful contents from Facebook.

Facebook also told that there is a special team to check and remove the harmful content throughout the applications. Around 12 million materials are excluded under the name of child exploitation and sexual abuse. The reports from the users are also closely monitored and removed.

The Snapchat and Tiktok are also working towards content moderation and both the application don’t openly display personal information publicly or use locations.

What steps should be taken?

The organizations recruiting special teams and individual focus to remove harmful contents for children is well and good, but it is not enough. The exploiters and people causing these problems are always two steps ahead of these organizations.

Therefore, more social media platforms should come forward to check and screen the content before allowing them to upload. This step should be taken either manually or using any cutting-edge technological advancement, but it should be mandatory. Organizations taking precautions instead of taking measures after the problem will be ideal for the current situation.

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