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Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and UNICEF.

This is the list of research questions for the Berkman/UNICEF project about child online safety in the developing world. A first step of the project is to gather information about the existing research and work that has been done in this area. The following questions address those areas about which we are most interested; we encourage you to contribute to this wiki by adding your responses below. Alternatively, we would also welcome responses by email to ldyson@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

Existing Tools: research, education modules, studies

1. Are you aware of specific studies commissioned about Internet safety for children in developing nations, particularly those that aren't in English?
2. Are you aware of any additional information or resources relevant to this topic? This might include studies, education modules, initiatives, conferences, or anecdotal evidence.
3. Is this issue a perceived threat or is the focus of most organizations simply on getting children access to technology, without an included safety component?

High-risk groups and online threats

• Much of the research on developed nations identifies certain children as high-risk for being harmed by Internet-related content or contact, though we have not found any analogous studies for risk factors in developing countries. Are you aware of any reports on what would constitute risk factors for Internet safety in developing nations?
• To your knowledge, to what extent do the factors that increase risk for children in the developed world also apply to those children in the developing world?
• If access to technologies is particularly low in certain nations or if use is distinctly different (for example, if children only have access to computers in schools rather than at home), children may not face all of the dangers that exist in developed nations or may face new potentially problematic situations. How are issues that have been documented in the developed world, like bullying and sexual predation, experienced differently, or similarly, in the developing world? Are there significant differences (cultural or practical), or are they the same problems in a new space?

The two other issues I see raised time and again in Asia are cyber-isolation and Internet addiction. For what it’s worth, both cyberbullying and cyber-isolation are topics of much research in Korea and Japan. I was at an international conference where these topics were mentioned prominently in *every* presentation from every researcher from these countries (and not once from researchers from any other country). The governments of these two countries have made tackling issues of cyberbullying and cyber-isolation (think of the stereotypical otaku hidden away in his room in Japan). China has made a big deal of dealing with ‘Internet addiction’, and has even set up high-profile ‘camps’ to ‘treat’ youngsters with this affliction. (This is something that Western media like to report on, it should be easy to find references.

• How does cultural relativism affect how people perceive risks online (for example, parental pressure for youth to participate in online sexual activities for money)? Do you know of any regionally unique issues (for example, the use of mobile technologies by Caribbean youth to arrange to meet on buses to have sexual intercourse)?

Technology access and the future

• We are interested in exploring questions of current and future access to technology. Have you observed any trends in technological usage and behavior amongst young people in developing countries?
• What kind of risks may emerge, or recede, as ICTs become available to a wider group of people?

Indeed, I think that what happens over the mobile phone (whether it will be the mobile web or SMS or something else entirely) will be most important for youth in developing countries. The explosion in broadband connectivity in Eastern and Southern Africa that we are on the cusp of experiencing might be a good ‘hook’ for some of your research. I note that the use of things like Facebook among university students in Kenya has been very strong even though connectivity has been so poor and expensive – I imagine that this use will explode once access is opened up to broader groups of young people, as we are going to see shortly. [I have a not-for-attribution anecdote related to this – earlier this year I was told by a network administrator that Facebook was accounting for over half of all traffic on the Kenyan national research and education network. I do not know if this is accurate or not, but it suggests an interesting and underreported development.)

Your work

1. Have you done any work that directly intersects with any of these issues? If so, what were relevant issues and what were the outputs from the work?
2. Have any of your colleagues or peers worked on projects that directly intersect with any of these issues?

Your thoughts

1. What are the most pressing issues and problems in this area?
2. What do you think would work best? (e. g. Would a curricular intervention work - if so, what might it look like? Are there any feasible technical interventions?)
3. Who are the key players that should be engaged in this process? Do you have any recommendations for people or organizations with whom we should be in contact?
4. Most of all, we want to gather real reports and observations about these issues from people who have firsthand experience. Have you, personally, observed any instances of online risks affecting children in developing countries?
5. What is the dominant narrative of online or mobile risk in the country in which you work (for example, boys pressuring girls for sexual favors vs. predatory threats)?