If you’ve ever handed a smartphone or tablet to a toddler who just wouldn’t quiet down or found yourself trying to regulate the amount of time your children spend online, you know that the digital lives of children are in equal measure a profound source of promise and peril.
1. Cyberbullying
For digital non-natives who remember “wedgies,” name-calling and the guerilla warfare of school hallways, online bullying may seem like the positive evolution of an age-old problem.
2. Privacy-violating apps
Back in 1998, Congress passed the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. It was one of the earliest pieces of Internet regulation, designed specifically to prohibit online services from collecting information on children under 13 years of age.
3. Increased risk of abduction
Everyone overshares on social media, but when children post too much about themselves online, it can be dangerous. The line between oversharing and regular sharing is of course blurry, but when it comes to children, we all need to err on the side of caution.
4. Exposure to inappropriate content
For many Gen X-ers and Millennials, their earliest experience of inappropriate or lewd content came in the form of a magazine–or a page ripped from a magazine–shared in a schoolyard, an R-rated movie or something someone found hidden in a parent’s sock drawer.