A non-profit organisation, Techsocietal, the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) Internet Society Nigeria and TikTok on Tuesday held workshop for parents and educators on online safety for children.

The workshop hosted by TechSocietal is to commemorate the Safer Internet Day (SID) celebrated every second Tuesday  in February

This year’s theme is: “Digital Safety Conversations with Children/Youth’’.

The Executive Director, Techsocietal, Mrs. Tope Ogundipe said that the aim was to teach them how to engage digital safety conversations  with children.

Ogundipe said that the internet was the new playground, as such there were a lot of things that should be monitored.

She said one of such things was the screen time because excessive screen time  could be detrimental  to children’s development.

“Kids are a priority, according to NCC research, about 79 ;per cent of Nigerian kids are not safe online.

“So it is very important  that we continue  to evolve the strategies, policies,  initiatives,  programmes that will engage all stakeholders.

“We need to have a multi stakeholders affairs to this issues and drive it down to the  grassroot with awareness  and  education about online safety for children,” Ogundipe said.

According to her, we should have conversations about contact risk, the thing that children come across online about people who contact them.

She said that children should be aware of using privacy settings not to share  information with strangers.

Ogundipe said that children should also be educated about their  behaviour  online and not to bully other kids and know who to talk to if they should see anything  that was funny online.

“We should empower them with tools and resources and how to keep themselves safe online and we should not stop them,” she said.

Ms Ijeoma Bassey, Senior Manager, NCC Zonal Office, Lagos said that NCC had organised parenting workshop, collaborated with NGOs and others for dissemination  of Child Online Protection  (COP) materials.

Bassey said that NCC had also talked at Parents Teachers Association’s meeting on online protection of children.

She urged educators and parents to create a safe space for children; they should  anticipate  risk  and they should  be empowered to face the challenges.

According to her, educators, parents  should be observant and engage children to ensure a healthy balance  between  fun activities  online and fun activities  offline.

Mr Adewolu Adene, Public Policy Manager, Google, said that denial of access and shutting the gate of online activity of a child was not the answer to  a child’s online safety.

Adewolu said that rather education, awareness and shared responsibility would help in children’s  online  safety.

The Chief Executive Officer,  Data Science, Nigeria, Dr. Olubayo Adekambi highlighted seven tools to ensure online safety for  children

Adekanmbi said that there were comment filters, Account and Video Privacy, Screen  time management, safety  Centre, reporting  inappropriate  content   13+ functionalities  and for you feed to check children.

He said that bad words could hurt a child’s esteem and TikTok  hides, filters coukd determined  what people could put on ones page to avoid bullying .

The Star