As ever more children across the world gain access to the Internet, the range of risks which they face online is increasingly becoming a priority for government policy makers and other stakeholders.
Kristina Irion, Research Director Public Policy at the CMCS and Assistant Professor at CEU's Department of Public Policy, has prepared a report on the subject for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): The protection of Children Online: Risks faced by children online and policies to protect them.
The report, which was prepared under the supervision of the OECD Secretariat, will feed into related OECD activities, such as work by the Working Party on Information Security and Privacy (WPISP) on the evolving privacy landscape and on identity management.
The report examines the risks that children face on the internet, as well as the policy measures that governments and other stakeholders have taken to improve the protection of children online, in a comparative fashion.
Government policies to protect children online are in their infancy, the report observes. "To enhance their efficiency and catch up with the rapid adoption of the Internet by children," the report concludes, "governments face three main challenges:
- Managing policy complexity through enhanced policy co-ordination, consistency and coherence;
- Adopting an evidence-based policy-making approach;
- Taking advantage of international co-operation to improve the efficiency of national policy frameworks and foster capacity-building."