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Published on May 30, 2002 The Nation

The Internet offers both opportunities and dangers to young users. Now, parents have an ally to guide their children online.

Good news for Thai parents and teachers: a new tool can help reduce the gap between you and your children in cyberspace.

Last week, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purpose) and Unicef launched a Thai-language version of Protecting Children Online, a guidebook designed to help parents, teachers, and government and child’s rights agencies as well as children themselves, in preventing the exploitation of children online.

Before taking a look at the book, consider some facts that help explain why such a book is needed.

About 74 per cent of Thai children surveyed by an ABAC poll in 1999 said they used the Internet to find new friends, while 70 per cent said they had considered going to meet people they had met in a chat room. And about 44.8 per cent said they had already met someone they first encountered in a chat room.

Meanwhile, 40 per cent of 300 Thai parents surveyed said that they had no real idea what websites their children were visiting.

Those statistics may look yet more worrisome when considering other findings. Many children’s rights agencies have found that child abusers are specifically visiting chat rooms and websites to find new child victims. Thai teens’ fascination with Internet centres means that they may be especially vulnerable.

Furthermore, children are among the most active group of Internet users.

“The Internet has become the dominant forum for global exchange of images and other depictions of children, and for sexual abuse of children,” says Carmen Madrinan, executive director of ECPAT International.

“The Internet has become a magnet for sexual abusers, who use it as a tool to sexually exploit children. Chat rooms, newsgroups, and communities are being used for this purpose,” she adds.

“Teaching children how to handle themselves on the Internet is important. There are also filtering software packages and website rating schemes designed to help parents guide their children’s Internet experience while still allowing children Internet independence,” the book advises.

For Thai parents wanting to know more about Internet exploitation of children, www.thaiparents.net contains useful information, and a forum to ask advice from contributors and members.

“The most popular question that parents ask me is what can they do to stop their child from chatting, and playing games on the Internet,” the webmaster reveals on the webboard for www.thaiparents.net.

The webmaster advises parents to be patient, talk to their children about what is and is not appropriate online, keep an open mind about their children’s interests, and have alternative sites for children in search of productive Net activity.

In Protecting Children Online parents can find many websites recommended for children, as well as learn about dangers that children face in cyberspace. The book also tells parents, teachers and all concerned agencies about new technology being used by pornographers, paedophiles and child traffickers, and how to best protect children.

For more information on ECPAT, call 02-215-3388 or visit www.ecpact.net.

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas

The Nation