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The article argues that childhood now unfolds in both physical and digital worlds, and a child’s right to safety must extend online.
With cybercrimes against children rising sharply, especially sexual exploitation, CRY launches a national conversation urging parents, schools, platforms and policymakers to share responsibility, build trust, strengthen digital literacy and treat online safety as a core child rights issue.
A child’s world has never been entirely within an adult’s view.
There are conversations children have with friends, questions they hesitate to ask, worries they may not share and experiences they may find difficult to explain. The digital world has added another layer to childhood—one that parents, teachers and other adults may not always see or even know exists.
A child can be sitting safely at home and still come across something online that frightens, humiliates or harms them. A message, an image, a game or a seemingly harmless interaction can sometimes take a child into territory they are not equipped to handle alone.
National Crime Records Bureau data offers a sobering reminder of how quickly the problem is growing: cybercrimes against children increased nearly twenty-fold between 2017 and 2024. Behind this rise is an especially disturbing trend—the growing incidence of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
These numbers should make us pause—not because children need to be frightened away from the internet, but because adults need to take greater responsibility for the world children are already growing up in.
This is why CRY—Child Rights and You has launched a six-month national conversation on online safety for children.
Yet our understanding of child protection has not kept pace with the realities of childhood today. Online safety is too often reduced to screen time, parental controls or restricting access to devices. These measures have their place, but they cannot prepare a child for every situation they may face when an adult is not there to intervene.
Children can face bullying, grooming, sexual exploitation, misinformation, privacy violations and harmful content. Sometimes the harm is obvious. At other times, it can begin with an interaction that seems completely ordinary.
The question is whether the systems around them are keeping pace. The rights every child enjoys offline do not disappear the moment they log on. Their right to safety, dignity, privacy, participation and healthy development must extend into digital spaces too.
This does not mean creating fear around technology or denying children its benefits. It means recognising that access without protection can leave children carrying a responsibility that should not rest on their shoulders alone.
Online harms also do not affect every child in the same way. The inequalities children experience offline can follow them into the digital world. Gender stereotypes, discrimination and exclusion can take new forms online. Children from marginalised communities may face additional barriers, while those with limited digital literacy may be more vulnerable to manipulation, exploitation and misinformation.
We also need to acknowledge what we do not yet know. Official crime data does not give us enough detail to fully understand how online harms differ by gender, age or circumstance. That gap matters. Without understanding who is most vulnerable and why, our responses will have limits.
Parents and caregivers have an important role, but they cannot monitor every message, search, game or interaction. Perhaps the most important thing they can offer is trust. A child who knows that an adult will listen without immediately taking away their phone, blaming them or asking what they did wrong is more likely to speak up when something goes wrong. The sentence “Something happened online and I need help” should never feel dangerous for a child to say.
Schools have an equally important role. Digital literacy must go beyond knowing how to use a device or navigate an app. Children need critical thinking, empathy, an understanding of consent and privacy, and the confidence to question, report and seek help when something does not feel right. Sometimes, that can begin with something as simple as “Pause. Think twice.” Before clicking, sharing, responding or trusting something online, children should know that it is okay to stop and question what they are seeing or being asked to do. But that pause should not become another burden placed entirely on the child. They also need adults, schools, platforms and systems they can turn to when something goes wrong.
Digital platforms influence what children see, who can reach them and how they interact. Their safety cannot be treated as an optional feature or left entirely to individual users. Technology companies, policymakers, civil society and communities all have a role in building a digital environment that is safer and more accountable.
Children themselves must also have a voice in this conversation. They are not simply people to be protected from the digital world. They are already living and participating in it. Their experiences can tell us things adults may not see, and their perspectives should help shape the solutions we create.
As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies reshape the way we communicate, learn and create, the boundaries of childhood will continue to shift. We cannot predict every risk that will emerge. But we can help children develop the confidence to pause, question, seek help and make informed choices. And we can make sure they are not expected to do this alone. Because online safety is not merely a cyber-issue.
Over the coming months, this conversation needs to become broader. We need to ask how gender shapes children’s experiences online, how parents can build trust rather than surveillance, what schools should teach about digital citizenship, what responsibility technology platforms must shoulder, and how emerging technologies such as AI are changing childhood.
These are all part of the same question: What does it take to give a child a safe childhood when part of that childhood exists online?
Every generation has had to rethink what keeping children safe means. For previous generations, it may have meant knowing where a child was after school or making sure they got home before dark. Today, it also means recognising that a child can be physically safe at home and still be vulnerable somewhere adults cannot see.
Childhood now unfolds across two interconnected worlds—the physical and the digital. Our responsibility is not to choose one over the other, or to keep children away from one. It is to make sure that the protections every child deserves travel with them wherever childhood takes them.
A safe childhood today must include a safe digital world!
The author is the Regional Director of CRY (East)
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth
