Bangalore: A global survey from Enea studies that lockdowns in many of the world’s leading economies lead to children being left unsupervised online for extended periods. The survey examines an urgent demand for internet parental controls, especially on mobile devices.
The unmonitored mobile activity was a challenge for parents of children of all ages. 44% of 11 – 15-year-olds and 30% of 6 – 10-year-olds spent at least 4 to 7 hours unsupervised a day, while even parents of under-fives said that their children spent at least an hour a day unsupervised on a mobile device.
The survey communicated 4,000 households in the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain on children’s mobile internet use. Enea’s survey reveals concerns from parents who are searching for effective safeguarding action when kids are using their mobile devices. The challenge seems to be most frequent in the US where children spent the most amount unchecked online.
When parents were asked whom they trust for online safeguarding, eight in ten parents said they would welcome assistance with parental controls from mobile operators. By contrast, less than a quarter of all parents said they would trust Facebook, Google, or any other social media provider with their children’s online safety.
“The mobile internet has provided a lifeline to keep us connected during the pandemic and network operators rose to the challenge,” said Indranil Chatterjee, Chief Customer Officer at Enea. “But as we all know the internet also has its dangers. It’s clear that parents overwhelmingly trust mobile operators to support them, in contrast to other Big Tech players. And that means operators not only have a responsibility – they also have a commercial opportunity – to strengthen their safeguards for children.”
One of the issues facing providers of content filtering and parental controls is high levels of encryption. Gorkem Yigit, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason: “Encryption protocols such as HTTPS and QUIC have made it more challenging for operators to stop inappropriate content such as adult, gambling or violence reaching vulnerable users. And things could get worse later this year as existing parental control solutions could be rendered obsolete due to the growing adoption of TLS 1.3 with encrypted SNI that will blind-side operators. So, to effectively safeguard children, operators should consider deploying AI-based traffic classification systems that can instantly identify content based on statistical prediction, behavioral analysis, and heuristics.”
