73% of children experienced at least one cyber risk this year. The 2022 Child Online Safety Index reveals that cyber risks for children decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 but rose again in 2022.
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UK topped as the best country for child online safety worldwide, followed by Japan
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Cyber risks for children decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 and rose in 2022
Singapore, Singapore--(Newsfile Corp. - November 15, 2022) - Almost three in four (73%) children and adolescents aged 8-18 around the world experienced at least one cyber risk in the 12 months to September 2022. This, and the Child Online Safety Index (COSI) rankings of 100 countries were announced by international think-tank DQ Institute at the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh today. Constituting these risks:
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50% of children and adolescents across the surveyed countries are affected by cyber-bullying
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40% experience cyber threats
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25% are exposed to violent and sexual content
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16% are at risk for a gaming disorder
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8% are at risk for social media disorder
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40% of adolescents (aged 13-18) experience unwanted sexual contact
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13% of 8-12-year-old children experience risky contact, such as offline meetings with strangers or sexual contact.
Three in four children worldwide experienced at least one cyber-risk in 2022
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The 2022 Child Online Safety Index (COSI) is a national-level measure of child online safety that countries can use to track their performance and progress across six different stakeholders: children, families, schools, ICT companies, and soft and hard infrastructures of the government. As part of the 2022 COSI, a global ranking of 100 countries was also announced based on data from almost 330,000 children and adolescents across 100 countries, collected through DQ Institute's internal programs and through aggregation of data from external sources.
It has been a widely believed myth that the COVID-19 aggravated the cyber risk exposure of children and adolescents, but the 2022 COSI revealed otherwise. While the rates of cyber risk exposure among children and adolescents remained high, they decreased by 2 to 10 percent during the 2020-21 pandemic, compared to the three preceding years (2017-2019). Meanwhile, children with excessive screen time and underage social media access increased by 10 to 15 percent amid widespread lockdowns. In 2022, children's exposure to cyber-risk surged back up by 5 to 15 percent and increased more as lockdowns were lifted worldwide. The findings suggest that there was an increased awareness of threats to children's online safety during the COVID-19 lockdowns and thus increased reporting.