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Teaching privacy: A flawed strategy for children's online safety
David Finkelhor1, Lisa Jones1, Kimberly Mitchell1
1Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824 USA.
Child Abuse & Neglect
|April 10, 2021
Summary
Teaching children online safety through "privacy" is ineffective. Focusing on specific online harms like exploitation and bullying, rather than abstract privacy concepts, offers a more effective approach for child protection.
Area of Science:
- Childhood education
- Online safety
- Cybersecurity education
Background:
- Current approaches to children's online safety education often focus on "privacy."
- Privacy is a complex, evolving concept that is difficult to teach effectively to young people.
- The developmental stages of understanding privacy in children are not well understood, complicating curriculum design.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critique the effectiveness of privacy-focused online safety education for children.
- To propose an alternative framework for online safety education centered on specific harms.
- To advocate for evidence-based strategies in child online safety.
Main Methods:
- This commentary analyzes existing educational programs and research on children's online safety.
- It evaluates the limitations of privacy as a central theme in online safety education.
- It draws parallels between online and offline risks to inform educational strategies.
Main Results:
- Privacy is an abstract and difficult concept for children to grasp, with unclear developmental trajectories.
- Privacy skills may not be the most crucial for preventing the most severe online harms.
- There is limited evidence linking privacy practices to demonstrable reductions in online harm.
- Most privacy-focused online safety messages lack rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness.
Conclusions:
- Online safety education for children should prioritize specific harms such as sexual exploitation, cyberbullying, and harassment.
- Educational efforts should shift from abstract privacy concepts to concrete risk-prevention strategies.
- Developing effective online safety programs requires grounding in evidence-based practices used for addressing similar offline dangers.
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