Although 51% of parents in Romania talk to their children daily about the use of social networks, almost 70% do not yet trust their own abilities to support them when surfing online. Moreover, approximately 46% of parents either do not know about the existence of parental control functions on the main platforms, or do not know how to use them, according to the data of a study conducted by World Vision Romania in collaboration with Tik Tok.
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“It was pure luck that we had a harmonious development and that we entered beneficial sites”
Denisa Pandele is 25 years old and started creating online content at the age of 5, when she was already an adult, but the Internet discovered her when she was 10 years old. The parents had no discussion with her about online safety.
“We never discussed the Internet, I think because they didn’t have many digital skills. (…) But the truth is that on the Internet you can find a lot of things about life, in general, and you don’t need digital skills to talk about life. But they felt that because I had more digital skills, I would know better what was going on there. The truth is, I didn’t really know”.
Denisa did not know the dark side of the Internet. But he puts it down to luck and believes that parents should take their children’s online activity seriously, because inappropriate content can be hidden just a click away.
“It was pure luck that I had a harmonious development and that I entered sites that were beneficial for me. Other kids of course went to other sites. When I was in 6th or 7th grade, the boys in the class were watching movies they shouldn’t have been watching at that age literally right next to us. It was a very disturbing moment for me, I was also a more lonely child and it seemed to me something that neither they should have seen and obviously neither did we who were next to them and had no choice“, remembers Denisa.
Denisa Elena Pandele, content creator PHOTO Instagram/ Denisa Elena
The young woman, who is most active on Tik Tok and Instagram, the most popular networks among teenagers, has a piece of advice for parents:
“They should be very careful about what type of media their children consume and they should also be very careful about the online comment section, because there are all kinds of opinions there too. Even on a video about good things, nice content, you might find all kinds of opinions that your child will read in the comments and that might influence them too.”
Parents want to help their children online but don’t know how. What World Vision data shows
Parents of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 are concerned about their safety online, according to the data of a study conducted by World Vision Romania in collaboration with Tik Tok.
But while half of them say they talk to their teenagers every day, seven in ten say they don’t trust their own ability to help them navigate safely online.
When it comes to online parental control, parents believe that family discussions and established rules (30.8%) are the most effective form. Another 20% use online activity monitoring apps, while 18.4% prefer to check their children’s phone manually.
The study data shows that younger parents (under 35) are the ones who monitor the content accessed by children more frequently. They also have more trust in parental control tools (74%), compared to those over 55 (47%). Moreover, four out of ten parents over 55 do not know that the applications offer the parental control function.
,,Some of the parental control apps have been in the market for over 10 years. And there are even systems implemented by internet service providers, not just social media platforms“, says Călin Cozan, ANCOM representative.
Image from the launch event of the “Digital Safety and Parental Control” study
Minister of Education: The distinction between the physical world and the virtual world is no longer justified
Education Minister Daniel David, who also has a doctorate in psychology, comes with a realistic perspective on internet use.
“I remember, when social networks appeared, we also distinguished in the specialty area, in psychology, between the real physical world and the virtual world. Well, now we see that the distinction between the physical world and the virtual world is no longer justified.
And many have not yet understood this, and we treat the virtual world in such a way, without imposing, for example, the rules that we have for the physical world. In the physical world you know, for example, how to take care of yourself, you don’t go to a bad place, you don’t go to a place where you can be put at risk. In the virtual world we think no, that’s something else entirely. So we will have to learn, prepare and develop our safety and education skills for the virtual world as well.
First of all, I repeat, we must end this distinction, understand that the virtual world is actually our everyday world, alongside what we still call physical reality”draws Daniel David’s attention.
The technology itself cannot be blamed, says the minister, but it is all about the users.
“As Protagoras said: “Man is the measure of things”. In other words, technology itself is not good or bad, it becomes good or bad depending on how we, humans, use it”.
“We have to train ourselves, but also the children so that they are not overwhelmed”
Dr. Caroline Middelsdorf, who is a psychologist member of the FIDES network (a WHO initiative) believes that parents need to navigate the online world with their teens and children and discuss what they discover there. I can learn a lot of interesting things on the Internet, and this dimension is not at all negligible, but there are also dangers.
“I think we need to train ourselves, but also the children, to be prepared for this world, to help them not to be overwhelmed by it or fall prey to anxiety, depression or self-image problems”, emphasizes the psychologist.
“We have to be there. We need to understand what’s going on there. Let’s be where our young people and children are. Because when we talk about how much time we give our children to be on social media we also have to think about what we offer them as an alternative“, also says Mihaela Nabăr, president of World Vision Romania.
The responsibility cannot belong only to the parents, psychologist Caroline Middelsdorf points out.
“I think that such things need to be clarified in schools or even at the government level. From our perspective, it’s important to have a clear guideline to which we—as parents and as schools—can relate. From a psychological perspective, we have to learn.”
Mihaela Nabăr: It is important to teach those who accompany children to protect them
Mihaela Nabăr, president of World Vision Romania, believes that the most work needs to be done in the area of parents, so that they can be more effective with their children when it comes to the challenges of the Internet.
“One, we are talking about the campaigns carried out by digital platforms, which explain simply and clearly how parental control tools can be used, visual materials and interactive guides. Two, mainstreaming digital literacy in schools. It’s important to talk about it. Three, training programs for parents. It is very important not to stop at children, because they are digital natives anyway, they grew up with screens. It is also important to teach those who accompany them to protect them. It is important to have information campaigns in the countryside. This is where World Vision really has great expertise. We know how to reach the schools, the town halls, the local media, the churches, the priests who can carry on this message. It is important to do intergenerational dialogue activities, which bring parents, children and teachers together. Let’s not talk about parents in the absence of children, but let’s put them at the table, let’s make them talk about what’s right, what’s not right“, says Mihaela Nabăr.
How Tik Tok says it protects children
The minimum age required to create an account on Tik Tok is 13 years. The network asks for the date of birth of those who want to become users, but they are aware that not everyone fills in the real data.
,,This is the challenge for all online services. So our commitment to implementing the minimum age requirement doesn’t stop at the registration date. The moderation team is trained to alert when they suspect a user is under 13. Or if an account is reported for another rule violation, moderators also check if the user appears to be under 13″says Marta Karczewska, Tik Tok representative for Central and Eastern Europe.
Artificial intelligence could help them in this regard.
“We tested new AI technologies in the UK and found that they helped us remove thousands of additional accounts belonging to minors under the age of 13. We plan to expand this technology, including in the European Union, and are currently collaborating with European data protection authorities”.
Marta Karczewska
Parents can link their account with their child’s account
App representatives say they are now offering parents a tool to control what their teen does on the app.
“One of the most useful tools for families is Family Pairing, which allows parents to link their account with their teen’s account and enable more safety features. Among them are: control of the time spent in the application (with the possibility of setting different limits for days of the week or weekend), control of direct messages.
Now parents can see who the teen is following on TikTok, who is following him/her, and who he/she has blocked. In addition, we’ve given parents more visibility into their teen’s accounts: they automatically receive notifications when they post a publicly visible video and can see the teen’s chosen privacy settings.” say representative of Tik Tok.
More difficult to control, however, is what type of content the teenager is watching.
