CSR For Telecommunications

A genuine breakthrough for children this week.   The #G7's joint declaration on online child safety, backed by all members and by Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya and the Republic of Korea, moves decisively beyond the "ban children or do nothing" debate and moves towards where the evidence points: on systemic change.   Three things stand out, echoing what UNICEF urged the G7 to do: ⚙️ Safety by design, with protective settings by default, treated as the expectation rather than an afterthought. 🔎 Accountability and transparency for digital services, including risk assessment and mitigation, so harms can no longer be kept quiet. 🛑 A non-negotiable line on AI-generated child sexual abuse material and deepfakes, with duties to detect and remove. That last point matters enormously. Children today face a new threat: AI-generated sexual images of themselves. Governments agreeing this is a red line, and that conversational AI must be made safe for children by default, is exactly the kind of consensus the world needs as it heads into the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.   The principle is simple, and one UNICEF has long championed: protect the child, fix the system. This week the G7 agreed. Now we work together to deliver it.   UNICEF stands ready to support every government turning these words into real protection for children. https://lnkd.in/gPQRKWP6

In the UAE digital parenting is now a matter of law. Federal Decree Law No. 26 of 2025 on Child Digital Safety, establishes a comprehensive child focused regulatory framework that reaches far beyond content moderation. It formalises responsibility across platforms, internet service providers, and caregivers. The objective is explicit: protect children from digital practices and content that harm their physical, psychological, and moral wellbeing. The law applies to any digital platform operating in the UAE or targeting users within it. That includes websites, search engines, smart applications, messaging services, online gaming, social media, live streaming, podcasts, video on demand services, and e-commerce platforms. Internet service providers are equally within scope. One of the most significant structural elements is a formal classification system for digital platforms based on their risk and impact on children. Platforms will be categorised by type, content, scale of use, and child impact. Regulatory standards and age based restrictions will flow from that classification. This shifts the conversation from reactive moderation to risk based design. The decree prohibits the collection, processing, or sharing of personal data of children under 13, except under defined conditions. Educational and health platforms may be exempted by Cabinet decision, provided enhanced safeguards are in place. Platforms are required to implement privacy by default settings, age verification mechanisms, age restriction tools, content filtering and rating systems, and controls on targeted advertising. Commercial online games involving gambling or betting are explicitly prohibited for children. Internet service providers must activate content filtering systems and require guardian consent to terms of service, including parental control integration. But the most striking feature is this: the law codifies parental responsibility. Caregivers now have seven clear legal duties: They must supervise children’s digital use and deploy parental control tools. They must ensure children only use age appropriate platforms. They must prevent online exploitation and protect dignity and privacy. They must safeguard children’s personal data. They must educate children about digital safety and behavioural risks. They must report harmful content or child sexual abuse material immediately. And they must comply with additional obligations set out in implementing regulations. For global providers, the implications are operational. Confirm whether your services fall within scope. Map existing compliance under the EU Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Act, and other regimes against the UAE framework. Conduct a structured gap assessment. Align product, legal, and policy teams so that controls are implemented and clearly explained in terms of service, privacy notices, and child safety resources. The law is in force. Full compliance is expected by January 2027.

🎮 ⚠️ 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 👧🏼 Online gaming as one of the fastest-growing child social environments globally yet one that remains unregulated! 🎮Gaming also remains largely under-researched compared to social media 🚸This new paper ⬇️ warns that the overlap between grooming for organized violence and child sexual exploitation is growing, perpetrators use similar manipulation tactics building trust in-game, isolating children from peers and moving conversations to private spaces⬇️ ⚠️ UNICEF Innocenti Working Paper 2025: “Protecting Children in Online Gaming: Mitigating Risks from Organized Violence” highlights how online gaming platforms are increasingly used by organized violent groups, including non-state armed groups, hate networks, and criminal gangs, to manipulate, groom and recruit children. The paper emphasises that while gaming itself is not harmful and provides social and developmental benefits its social and interactive design makes it a target for exploitation. Child safeguarding is therefore critical in gaming spaces for four reasons: 1️⃣Recruitment and grooming risks: Violent and extremist groups, as well as criminal gangs, use gaming chats, voice channels, and communities to radicalise or recruit young players. 2️⃣Exposure to harmful content: Many children encounter hate speech, harassment, or violent propaganda while gaming. 3️⃣Lack of effective regulation: Platforms often lack robust moderation, transparency or age assurance systems. 4️⃣Psychological harm and social vulnerability: Children targeted online can experience trauma, coercion, or exploitation similar to other online abuse contexts. 🚨 UNICEF calls for a multistakeholder safeguarding approach, involving regulators, the gaming industry, educators, and parents, to integrate protection measures into game design, strengthen moderation and age controls, and provide recovery services for victims. What is the Scale of Child Gaming Globally? Figures of children gaming worldwide are startling : An estimated 1.5–1.8 billion children play video games globally, representing roughly 80% of all 2–18-year-olds. In middle- and upper-income countries, over 90% of children over age 2 play games in some form . ‼️ Age groups: 🎮Ages 2–12: Typically play casual or educational games, often on tablets or phones. 🎮Ages 13–17: More likely to engage in online multiplayer or social games involving voice and chat features. 🎮By their early teens, most young gamers interact with strangers in-game—about 37% of 12–15-year-olds report playing with people they’ve never met . ‼️ This report highlights that safeguarding children in gaming must now be treated as a core child protection issue. ‼️ The report urges governments, platform, child protection agencies to act collaboratively to embed child rights into platform design and ensuring that digital play spaces remain safe environments rather than new frontiers for exploitation. See more below ⬇️

Online Child Safety When children spend hours immersed in digital worlds, from virtual playgrounds to chat enabled games, the risks they face are no longer theoretical. They are visible every day across platforms designed for connection and creativity but too often exploited by bad actors. Platforms such as Roblox, which deliberately target younger audiences and profit from their engagement, continue to struggle with inappropriate content, grooming attempts, and open communication channels that leave children exposed. Algorithms and moderators, no matter how capable, still fail to catch what determined offenders conceal. Families are being asked to shoulder an impossible responsibility. If a platform markets itself to children, it carries a duty of care. Protecting young users must be built into the business model as a standard feature, not treated as an add on. Expecting parents to manually supervise every message or purchase is unrealistic when digital risks evolve faster than household awareness. Action is needed from both sides: For platforms:   • Build safer default settings for users under 18, limiting unsolicited chats, external friend requests, and in game purchases.   • Collaborate with independent child protection experts to audit moderation systems and adapt quickly to new threats.   • Offer localised, single step reporting tools and real human review with clear escalation to authorities.   • Publish transparent safety reports and enforcement results to restore community trust. For families and educators:   • Talk with children in age appropriate manner about privacy, consent, and tactics of cyber manipulation.   • Use the available safety tools and also teach digital awareness and critical thinking as everyday skills.   • Protecting children online is not optional. It is a shared responsibility at the intersection of technology, policy, and parenting. The question is no longer whether platforms can do more, but why haven't they been doing more. #ChildSafetyOnline #DigitalResponsibility #OnlineSafety #SafeCities #DigitalEthics

Important Report: Frontiers in Digital Child Safety - Designing a child-centered digital environment that supports rights, agency, and well-being ny Technische Universität München, Universität Zürich | University of Zurich, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University About the report “Frontiers in Digital Child Safety: Designing Child-Centered Digital Ecosystems That Support Rights, Agency, and Well-Being” presents a forward-looking vision for digital child safety. Rather than relying primarily on reactive, restriction-based safety measures, the report explores innovative ways to promote digital safety through child-centered design strategies and outlines a roadmap to proactively embed safety, rights, agency, and well-being into the very fabric of digital products, services, and policies. This report is the culmination of a year-long initiative led by an international, multi-disciplinary Working Group of researchers, designers, educators, child advocates, and policy experts. The effort was led by an academic consortium chaired by Professors Sandra Cortesi and Urs Gasser at the Technical University of Munich’s (TUM) Think Tank, in collaboration with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. Key Contributions: 🔹 Reframing Digital Child Safety as a Design Opportunity: The report moves away from reactive, restriction-based models and instead proposes child safety as an opportunity for proactive, research-informed, and child-centered forms of interventions.  🔹 Foundational Framework Anchored in Children’s Rights, Agency, and Well-Being: The report presents a clear normative foundation — grounded in the UNCRC — and expands on three core pillars: Centering children, supporting their agency, and promoting their well-being. These principles serve as guideposts for all proposed interventions. 🔹 Four Strategic and Actionable Approaches to Safety: The report outlines four distinct but interconnected approaches to digital child safety: 1. Design approaches that foster trust 2. Help-seeking and reporting approaches 3. On-device interventions for conduct and contact risks 4. Educational and user-interface design approaches Each includes concrete strategies, examples, and insights for implementation. 🔹Cross-Cutting Insights and a Call for Ecosystem-Level Change: Rather than isolated fixes, the report calls for adaptive, learning-oriented safety ecosystems built through sustained, cross-sector collaboration. It also identifies tensions that must be negotiated transparently. #AI #safety #aiethics

‼️🔞 #BreakingNews European Commission has released for public consultation its long-anticipated on the guidelines on protection of minors online under the #DSA 🔷These guidelines represent a significant milestone for both child rights advocates and data privacy professionals, as they signal the EU’s intent to move from general commitments to the practical enforcement of child-protective standards across online platforms. The consultation is open until 10 June 2025, with final guidelines expected by summer. 🔷Rooted in extensive consultations with civil society, child experts, industry, and children themselves, the guidelines build on a rich tapestry of empirical insight and normative frameworks such as the #UNCRC, #GDPR, and the Better Internet for Kids strategy (#BIK+). They express a rights-based vision of the digital environment, where platforms accessible to minors are accountable for the design choices and systemic risks they introduce. 🔷A key message resonates throughout: if minors are de facto users—whether because the platform targets youth, is widely used by them, or their presence is known—then protective obligations apply. These include technical and organisational safeguards, from privacy-preserving defaults and robust moderation policies to age-appropriate design and transparent recommender systems. Notably, the burden of safety cannot fall solely on children or their guardians. 🔷 A particularly important provision addressed by the guidelines is Article 28(2) DSA, which prohibits online platforms from presenting advertisements based on profiling when they are aware with reasonable certainty that the recipient is a minor. The Commission interprets this prohibition narrowly and with rigour: any advertising technique that involves tracking, behavioural analysis, or inference from personal data is off-limits for children. Platforms cannot circumvent this rule by relying on anonymised identifiers or indirect profiling signals. Furthermore, they are not permitted to process additional personal data just to determine whether a user is a child unless this is strictly necessary and respects the principles of data minimisation and purpose limitation. This puts the onus on platforms to adopt privacy-preserving alternatives (such as contextual advertising) wherever minors are likely to be present. #privacy #children #minors #platforms #advertising #ecommerce #profiling

Have you heard about noob = A novice, new player paw = parents are watching pos = parents over shoulder Children are being groomed on gaming platforms - and most parents don’t even know it. How grooming works in games • Predators no longer lurk only on obscure websites. They play the same games children do. • They chat, cooperate, and offer gifts or virtual currency to build trust. • Then they shift to private chats, ask for secrets, and gradually introduce sexual talk or image requests. • Some even “direct” children through livestreams. What the research shows • Online gaming is social: 64% of UK 8–17-year-olds who play online chat in-game, and 31% talk to strangers - a major contact risk. (Ofcom, 2024) • Grooming crimes are rising: UK police logged 7,000+ “Sexual Communication with a Child” offences in 2023/24 - an 89% increase since 2017/18. (NSPCC, 2024) • Younger children are being coerced: IWF found record levels of “self-generated” abuse material, with a disturbing rise involving under-10s. Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), 2024) • Online enticement is surging globally, including cases linked to generative AI. (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2024) • Regulators warn: gaming is now one of the highest-risk environments for grooming. • Girls are often targeted, but boys are not safe as well. • Tweens and teens are especially vulnerable as they spend more time on online multiplayer gaming and chatting with strangers. What must change Gaming companies ✅ Make child safety the default - private profiles, DM-off, age assurance, and friction for link-sharing ✅ Detect grooming across full conversations, not just single messages, and report swiftly to NCMEC and hotlines ✅ Ban “gifting” to minors and restrict contact between adults and children ✅ Publish transparent safety reports and share data across the industry Parents ✅ Keep play visible - gaming should happen in shared spaces, not behind closed doors ✅ Disable open chat for under-13s, and ensure your child’s friends are people they actually know ✅ Teach the 3Cs of online risk: content, contact, conduct ✅ Talk about red flags - gifts, secrecy, or talk about bodies and photos. Practise: leave, block, report, tell ✅ Regularly check game ratings, privacy settings, and chat histories Children and young people ✅ Don’t accept friend requests from strangers ✅ Don’t share photos or personal information ✅ If someone makes you uncomfortable, leave, block, report, and tell a trusted adult ✅ Remember: offers of “free” game items are a common grooming trick Read More Child Sexual Exploitation in Online Gaming: Risks and Realities, UNICEF - https://lnkd.in/gCiKUetU Gaming, eSafety Commissioner- https://lnkd.in/gEuk8pRW Let’s make gaming fun and safe, not a hunting ground for predators. ChildSafeNet #ChildSafeNet #OnlineSafety #Gaming #Parenting

Platforms keep telling families to “be the arbiters” of online safety because it shifts responsibility away from them. After watching Roblox CEO David Baszucki's interview on The New York Times Hard Fork Podcast with Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, the takeaway is clear. We cannot wait for Silicon Valley to develop a conscience (who is really waiting anymore, cmon), and we cannot assume platforms with 150 million daily users will voluntarily build guardrails for children. That does not mean we are powerless. It means the work shifts closer to home. Here is what communities can actually do. 1. Build real digital literacy, not fear campaigns. Children do not need scare tactics. They need to understand how platforms steer behavior, how strangers operate online, and how design choices influence what they see. When kids understand the patterns, they navigate them with confidence. 2. Normalize open conversations at home. Ask kids with whom they play. Ask what makes them uncomfortable. Ask what feels confusing or stressful. Children talk when they feel they will not be punished for honesty. 3. Treat online spaces like any other community space. We do not send kids to a playground without talking about boundaries. Screens do not change the core responsibility. Families can help children identify safe spaces, leave experiences that feel wrong, and recognize that a stranger online is still a stranger. 4. Use public libraries, educators, and community groups. Adults who work with children see patterns families do not always catch. They can help interpret settings, teach media literacy, and point toward healthier digital environments that support creativity without unnecessary risk. 5. Share information across households. One family’s story often protects ten others. When parents talk to each other about what their children encounter online, gaps close quickly. Platforms rely on isolation. Communities reduce it. 6. Push back when companies frame engagement as safety. A million users in a game does not make the space safe. Popularity is not proof of care. Families have every right to ask what a company chooses to prioritize, what it ignores, and who gets left carrying the consequences. 7. Model what healthy digital engagement looks like. Kids watch how adults use technology. When families practice boundary-setting, critical questioning, and intentional use, those patterns transfer far faster than any settings menu ever will. The interview showed a CEO clearly comfortable placing responsibility on parents, putting safety second to profit, and while celebrating its own scale. Real safety begins with informed families, connected neighborhoods, and children who understand the digital world well enough to push back on it when needed. Platforms respond to pressure when communities stop cooperating with narratives that do not match reality. We cannot fix Silicon Valley. We can strengthen the places where kids actually grow up. Blog link in the comments.

We teach stranger danger offline.  What about online? Digital safety isn't optional anymore. Especially for autism individuals. Research shows something uncomfortable:  “Autism individuals are disproportionately targeted for online grooming.” Not because they're "less capable." Because they're often more trusting, literal in communication, and seeking connection. Groomers know this. They exploit exactly those traits. Data from NSPCC shows online grooming reports rose 80% in the past four years. In social gaming environments, high-risk grooming situations develop in just 45 minutes on average. 45 minutes. That's one homework session. One gaming break. One "I'll just check on them in a bit" moment. Autism individuals may struggle to recognize inappropriate or concerning behavior. They can be overly trusting and find it hard to report issues. This isn't about fear. It's about preparation. Here's what actually protects kids: 1. 𝐒𝐞𝐭 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 Not after problems start. Before. 2. 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 It may be hard for some children to understand that not everyone is who they say they are online. Make it concrete: ↝ "Anyone can post a picture of a kid and actually be an adult." ↝ "If someone asks you to keep secrets from parents, that's a red flag." ↝ "Real friends don't ask for private photos." Write it out. Make a visual poster. Put it by their devices. 3. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 Let them know you will be monitoring their internet usage and what your expectations are. Not as punishment. As protection. 4. 𝐑𝐨𝐥𝐞-𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬 ↝ "What would you do if someone online asked where you live?" ↝ "What if they said they're 13 but want to video chat?" ↝ "What if they offer you something if you send a photo?" Practice responses until they're automatic. 5. 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 Check messages and chat periodically. If your child suddenly wants a new app you've never heard of, pause and research it first. 6. 𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬 Not in bedrooms unsupervised. Especially at night. Predators know when kids are alone and parents are asleep. Here's what I want you to know: Setting these boundaries doesn't mean you don't trust your child. It means you don't trust the adults who prey on children. Digital literacy is a life skill now. And for neurodivergent kids who may miss social cues or be more trusting, these safeguards aren't restrictive. They're protective scaffolding. Your child's safety is worth the uncomfortable conversations. Worth the boundary-setting. Worth checking their devices even when they protest. Start today. Not after something happens. What's one digital safety rule you've implemented that actually works? ♻️ Repost to Protect ✨ Follow Dr. Cécile Heinze ✨