This piece is part of a collection of works commissioned by WeProtect Global Alliance to amplify youth voices at their 2024 global summit.

Since 1991, when Tim Berners-Lee released the World Wide Web into the public, we’ve been asking ourselves “Are we ready for it?” in one form or another. However, the evolution of our digital environment, particularly in the last two decades, forced us to ask the question again, this time for our children. 

Are the children ready for the internet? 

The answer, perhaps unfortunately, is the same to both questions: For better or worse, age notwithstanding, we are all already here.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the future closer to us in many ways, mainly in that it shattered many of the fragile hangings-on of the past. 1.6 billion children were affected by the global disruption of education engendered by the lockdowns—the largest such disruption in documented history. Kids everywhere could not just go to school. What did this mean?

Well, that depended on where you were. In the lower-income parts of the world, it meant another addition to already very stratified societies. I saw this firsthand in Nigeria. The children of the elite went digital, and attended their elite schools in digital classrooms. The poor went nowhere at all. For the middle class… it was a learn what you can, where you can sort of situation which, for children born to not very educated parents, meant a lot of self-directed learning using that infinitely accessible resource we had not (and still haven’t!) fully childproofed yet—the internet.

The thing about “self-direction” on the internet: it is very, very hard. 

Almost any adult who uses today’s hyper-adapted internet, whether in a healthy or unhealthy manner (especially such an adult as has been present on the internet through its algorithmic evolutions), has naturally developed some discipline in navigating the web for their own purposes, and is usually considered cognitively capable of weighing and accepting the consequences of any decisions. A self-directed child in this landscape is an unwitting passenger. Even excluding explicit sexual content, you still have sites such as social media, one of the most popular internet destinations. These sites fulfill their purpose primarily by keeping users engaged through sophisticated engagement algorithms designed to maximize interaction. This programming often leads to an addictive experience, drawing users in and encouraging them to spend more time online. Today’s social media is, by design, a product that can be at odds with the development of healthy, controlled behavior, as its algorithms often prioritize engagement over self-regulation. It should not be for kids (but again, here we all already are).

Now, if you’re a child in a high-income family, even if you’re in a low-income country, you’ll probably be entering the internet as yourself (or a self-modelled pseudo-identity), on your own device, with your own credentials. You can still get around age verification with a little determination (or by finding unrestricted sites that offer the same content), but otherwise, the tools being developed to make the digital world safer by limiting what children have access to will be most effective for you. You also may have some informed parental guidance, better education, a better sense of where you should and shouldn’t be, and how to protect yourself. 

If you’re lower-income and under 15 years old in a low-income country, however, it is highly probable that you’re using dad's or mum’s device. Their identity, their credentials, their access and their social media algorithm. You stand no chance of controlled exposure. You get what I got—thrown into the deep internet, not knowing until it’s too late that you barely know how to swim.

Today, what concerns me most is that children, especially those in my society and similar ones, are still exposed to the same vulnerabilities to early forms of digital danger that existed when the internet first became widely accessible. And there are even more, new digital dangers to consider. Everyone’s on the internet. We need it for school and various other activities. If you’re not taught the rules of engagement that keep you in control, the internet teaches its own to you. To share my most recent personal experience: junior secondary school students in my community (Grades 7 to 9) are using generative artificial intelligence (AI tools like GPT) to generate answers to their assignments, write letters, and even compose their text messages. And it’s not just my experience that confirms this. No matter your position on AI tools, what we must agree on is that it is important to discuss how they should be used, and the dangers they can pose in replacing a child’s education instead of potentiating it. No one is having these conversations with the kids where I’m from. For the low-income child from a low-income country, formal education isn’t catching up to digital advancement. It is falling far behind. 

A safe digital world is one that neglects neither of these two adaptational approaches:

First, adapting the internet to the child. We can do this by ensuring age-appropriate access through age verification has begun to be explored more intensively in Europe. And by developing and implementing strict standards for content aimed at or viewable by children, as well as standards for content creators with a largely young focus or following.

Second, adapting the child to the internet. The weapon of the future is and has always been information. We need mainstream, global efforts to develop literacy in content engagement from an early age before a child begins to interact with the digital world. UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy Campaign appears to be working in this direction. We must go as far as installing an exhaustive and dynamic, regularly reviewed universal curriculum for developing digital safety skills. Overseen by the World Health Organization if need be. For many children, ‘stranger danger’ is the entirety of their safety education, even today. 

No one was truly prepared for this digital world when we began to sow its seeds. But the defining nature of life is adaptability. A defining nature of humanity is our overwhelming ability to adapt our world to ourselves, and our values. I believe the safety of our youth is one of these values—one we must keep, at least, at pace with our own personal freedoms.