The State of the World's Children 2017: Children in a Digital World

"Making the digital space better for children requires collaboration and cooperation among governments, United Nations agencies and other international children's organizations, civil society, the private sector, academia and the technical community, families and children themselves."

Featuring the testimonials of children and young people around the world, this annual report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) examines the different ways digital technology is affecting children's lives and life chances, identifying dangers as well as opportunities. UNICEF talked to children around the world in an effort to uncover how the internet and digital technology are helping and hindering children's learning, well-being, and social relationships. They learned that, although 1 in 3 internet users worldwide is a child, too little is being done to protect them from the potential hazards of the digital world. Thus, the report calls on governments, the digital technology sector, and telecom industries to create policies, practices, and products that can help children harness digital opportunities and protect them from harm.

Selected key messages:

Related to use and access:

• Youth (ages 15-24) is the most connected age group. Worldwide, 71% are online compared with 48% of the total population.
• About 29% of youth worldwide are not online. African youth are the least connected, with around 3 out of 5 offline, compared to just 1 in 25 in Europe.
• Globally, 12% more men than women used the internet in 2017. In India, less than one-third of internet users are female.
• A growing body of evidence indicates that children are accessing the internet at increasingly younger ages. In some countries, children under 15 are as likely to use the internet as adults over 25.
• Smartphones are fuelling a "bedroom culture", with online access for many children becoming more personal, more private, and less supervised.
• Children who rely on mobile phones rather than computers may get only a second-best online experience, and those who lack digital skills or speak minority languages often can't find relevant content online. Approximately 56% of all websites are in English, and many children cannot find content they understand or that is culturally relevant.

For better:

• Digital technologies are bringing opportunities for learning and education to children, especially in remote regions and during humanitarian crises.
• Digital technologies allow children to access information on issues that affect their communities and can give them a role in helping to solve them.
• Voices of Youth is UNICEF's digital platform for young people to learn more about issues affecting their lives. This community of youth bloggers from all over the world offers original insights and opinions on a variety of topics.
• Digital technologies can deliver economic opportunity by providing young people with training opportunities and job-matching services, and by creating new kinds of work.
• To accelerate learning, information and communication technology (ICT) in education needs to be backed by training for teachers and strong pedaegogy.

For worse:

• ICTs are intensifying traditional childhood risks, such as bullying, and fuelling new forms of child abuse and exploitation, such as "made-to-order" child sexual abuse material and live streaming of child sexual abuse.
• Predators can more easily make contact with unsuspecting children through anonymous and unprotected social media profiles and game forums.
• New technologies - like cryptocurrencies and the Dark web - are fuelling live streaming of child sexual abuse and other harmful content, and challenging the ability of law enforcement to keep up.
• Ninety-two per cent of all child sexual abuse URLs identified globally by the Internet Watch Foundation are hosted in just 5 countries: the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, France, and the Russian Federation.
• Efforts to protect children need to focus particularly on vulnerable and disadvantaged children, who may be less likely to understand online risks - including loss of privacy - and more likely to suffer harms.
• While attitudes vary by culture, children often turn first to their peers when they experience risks and harms online, making it harder for parents to protect their children.
• Inconsistent advice can be confusing for caregivers and educators, underlining the need for more high-quality research on the impact of ICTs on well-being.
• Although most children who are online view it as a positive experience, many parents and teachers worry that immersion in screens is making children depressed, creating internet dependency, and even contributing to obesity.
• Taking a "Goldilocks" approach to children's screen time - not too much, not too little - and focusing more on what children are doing online and less on how long they are online, can better protect them and help them make the most of their time online.

Responses:

• The power and influence of the private sector should be leveraged to advance industry-wide ethical standards on data and privacy, as well as other practices that benefit and protect children online.
• Governments can promote market strategies and incentives that foster innovation and competition among service providers to help lower the cost of connecting to the internet, thereby expanding access for disadvantaged children and families.
• Technology and internet companies should take steps to prevent their networks and services from being used by offenders to collect and distribute child sexual abuse images or commit other violations against children.
• Internet companies should work with partners to create more locally developed and locally relevant content, especially content for children who speak minority languages, live in remote locations, and belong to marginalised groups.
• Media stories about the potential impact of connectivity on children's healthy development and well-being should be grounded in empirical research and data analysis.

Pages 125-131 of the report offer a series of action points reflecting a core principle that UNICEF says should guide policymaking and practical action in the digital sphere: Respect and protect the child. Topics are related to, for example, teaching digital literacy to keep children informed, engaged, and safe online, and giving children and young people a voice in the development of digital policies that affect their lives.

The report also includes these "perspectives":

• "Realizing Limitless Possibilities: Technology empowers people with disabilities," by Kartik Sawhney
• "How digital technologies herald a bright future," by Karim Sy and Laura Maclet
• "A Vision for the Future: Reflections on children's rights in the digital age," by Pony Ma
• "Are you tattooed ... yet?" by Juan Enriquez
• "Look, Mum, no data!" by Anab Jain
• "Hey, Alexa, should I wear the pink or the sparkly dress today?" by Rachel Botsman
• "Empowering children to engage in the digital world," by Niels B. Christiansen

Join a webinar, hosted by UNICEF's Office of Research - Innocenti, "Informing Policy with the Latest Research on How Kids Connect Online" on December 13 2017 15:00 CET to find out more about this report and the issues it explores.

Click here to view the report in an interactive online format.