From online recruitment by militant groups to web addiction, the digital world poses various challenges for youngsters, and parents can help them navigate these by staying updated, Assam DGP Harmeet Singh said on Monday. He underlined the importance of parents ‘communicating’ with their wards and also monitoring their online activities so that children do not fall prey to the dark side of the internet.

Singh was delivering the keynote address at a National Dialogue on Children’s Rights on the Internet, ‘Infantia’, hosted by Assam Police here.  He maintained that the internet entered children’s lives especially during COVID-19 when most of the activities had gone online, from classes to family gatherings. “Adults came out of online life at the end of the pandemic, but children stayed on with the internet,” he said. Singh, who leads the State Police’s ‘sharenting’ campaign highlighting the risks of parents sharing children’s details online, emphasised that children can no longer be kept away from the internet or the digital world.

He said digital policies should be designed to teach children both how to use the internet responsibly and what to avoid. The older generation has to understand the digital world to help their children navigate through it safely, the DGP Harmeet Singh added. Among the perils facing the new generation is ‘problematic internet use’ or addiction to the internet, which could hamper a child’s growth and parents have to be vigilant about it, Singh added. Radical groups, religious or others, and militant groups also use the internet to recruit youth and there have been instances when they have succeeded, though most such youth have been brought back to the mainstream later, DGP Harmeet Singh added.

Emphasising that parents need to keep tabs on what their children are looking for in the internet, the top cop added, “Parents need to monitor, not to intrude.

They must communicate with the their children so that they open up.” Singh maintained that the productive use of internet should be encouraged among children and physical activities promoted so that they can develop their social skills also.