(Finance) – It is urgent to create safe digital environments for girls, boys and adolescents and face the opportunities and risks of the ongoing revolution. This is theappeal launched by Save the Children in view of World Internet Safety Day (Safer Internet Day 2024) established byEuropean Union on 6 February to reflect on the conscious use of technological tools and the active role that young people can have using the Internet. The Organization, in particular, highlights the need to pay maximum attention to trend of lowering the average age in the use of digital technologies and to theincrease in the average time spent online by younger people, especially after the pandemic. Although the law provides that a user can only have access to social media after turning 13, the reality shows a massive presence of pre-adolescents who have opened a profile indicating a greater age or have used that of an adult, often a younger parent or less aware: the 40.7% of 11-13 year olds in Italy use social mediawith a female prevalence (47.1%) compared to males (34.5%).
Minors use new technologies, in particular messaging apps and social networks, increasingly early, frequently and intensely. Among the youngest the time spent online is growing more and more, especially after the pandemic: in Italy people use the internet every day 78.3% of 11-13 year olds, 91.9% of adolescents in the 14-17 year old range and 44.6% of children between 6 and 10 years old.
“The digital environment represents an extraordinary opportunity for the young generations to eliminate inequalities and broaden horizons, but it is necessary that all children, girls and adolescents – declared Raffaela Milano, Director of Italy-Europe Programs and Advocacy at Save the Children – are accompanied in the acquisition of the essential skills to surf the web in a creative and conscious way. For this reason it is necessary to involve and train the adult figures of reference, starting from parents and teachers, also on the new frontiers of Artificial Intelligence. At the same time, aware of how the average age of first access to the internet has dramatically lowered due to the pandemic, a strong joint commitment is needed on the part of institutions and platforms to prevent the serious risks that boys and girls may encounter online line and allow them safe navigation”.
In the photography of digital Italy The age at which people own or use a smartphone is increasingly lower, the means of choice for connecting, with a significant increase in children between 6 and 10 years old who, after the pandemic, use their mobile phones every day: from 18.4% to 30.2% between the two-year period 2018-19 and 2021-22. 89.2% of 11-17 year olds use their cell phones every day. The day of the youngest largely revolves around the digital universe, including friendships, and it is here that children and adolescents also build their own identity.
Teenagers between 14 and 17 years old use the connection for various activities: instant messaging, i.e. real-time exchange through WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber and more (93%), watching videos (84%, growing), frequenting social media (79%), playing video games (72.4%) , make online purchases (28%), but also to read news (37%), take online courses (27%) and download ebooks (22%). In these virtual places, young people discuss and discuss, but they are also exposed to dangers, from the risk of bullying to that of not understanding the rules of privacy or the ways of interacting with others or of being subjected to the choices of algorithms. In fact, in 2022, acts of cyberbullying among pre-adolescents seem to be growing compared to 2021, in particular among 11 and 13 year olds compared to 15 year olds and the victims are more frequently girls. At 15 years of age, in the years considered, there is a decline in the phenomenon and a reduction in the gap between males and females, with a percentage of 11.4% for girls and 9.2% for boys, thanks to a greater ability to defend oneself from attacks, including reporting them, and a more concrete awareness of one’s own actions. If for many young people being online, exchanging contents and messages, represents an element of openness to the world, of escaping from isolation with the possibility of discovering new interests and sharing them, for others exposure online produces anxiety or can lead to a digital overexposure and a real form of addiction. In Italy, surveys on adolescents aged 11, 13 and 15 show that 13.5% of the sample makes problematic use of social media. It is above all girls who suffer from it and the most critical age is 13 years old: among the main reasons for the intensive use of social media is to escape from negative feelings. According to an ISS study, more than 50% of 13- and 15-year-old teenagers said they had failed in their attempts to spend less on social media. While it is boys who are more exposed to the problematic use of video games.
In general 24% of boys and girls aged 11, 13 and 15 are at risk, the percentage rises for males and the most critical age drops to 11 years. Technological, social media or online gaming addiction risk behaviors are related to increased social anxiety, depression and impulsivity, poor academic performance and a greater risk of overweight or obesity. One of the effects linked to internet addiction is self-isolation, which can reach the most extreme forms in the phenomenon of hikikomori, which literally means “staying apart”, and indicates those who decide to withdraw from social life for long periods without having contact with the outside world, using the internet and social networks as the only means of communication. A phenomenon that explodes especially between the ages of 15 and 17.
Among the risks, one of the most serious concerns the possibility of coming into contact with ill-intentioned adults. If it is true that, as emerges from the last one report from the Postal Police, cases of online solicitation of minors decreased slightly in 2023, it is also true that the majority of these episodes occur in pre-adolescence (11-13 years), an age at which the use of devices should be strongly mediated by adults. The age of the victims is decreasing: they are increasingly pre-adolescents between 10 and 13 years old while 9% are under 10 years old. Places of contact between minors and adults are often social media and online video games, where cybercriminals are able to manipulate conversations. Faced with an increasingly online life, the risk of being objects of sexual attention from adults is growing for children and adolescents: it is precisely the pre-adolescent group who, from what emerges from the Postal Police report, had the most sexual interactions in 2023 techno-mediated (206 out of 351 total cases). L’European Union has started a process of definition and approval of the Proposal for a Regulation on the prevention and fight against sexual abuse of minorsthe. Pending the adoption of the new regulation, it is important to extend the temporary exemption to European Electronic Communications Code (ePrivacy Code), to avoid that communication service providers are no longer authorized to use technologies to detect the circulation of both already known images and new images of sexual abuse of minors, or cases of solicitation of boys and girls for sexual purposes, and report it to public authorities.
(Photo: Viktor Hanacek)