Globally and locally, children and young people are active users of ICTs for purposes such as chatting and sharing personal information. This provides various positive opportunities for participation, creativity, and education.
Unfortunately, it has adverse effects.
According to the Communications Authority of Kenya, “protecting children online is a global problem that requires concerted efforts of parents, guardians, the government, and organizations that are child-centric, among others.”
“Children are a vulnerable group, and there have been many cases of children unknowingly getting into dangerous situations that sometimes have detrimental effects.”
For instance, the Internet has created opportunities for sexual abuse and exposure to pornographic content, which harms children and youth. Child pornography can have devastating physical, social, and psychological effects on children.
iGuide ‘Porn Free’ App
In Kenya, Khusoko meets with Mr. James Nyaga Ngatia, who is working to create an app called iGuide that aims to eradicate Pornography by protecting social media and internet users from access to sexual content.
Nyaga is among the second cohort of “100 Rise Global Winners” from Kenya. The Rise Global Challenge program encourages a lifetime of service and learning.
The Rise Program seeks to empower and inspire brilliant young people and support them for life as they work to serve others.
Nyaga says iGuide is a form of alternative entertainment. “This app site not only comes with automated storage but also provides other production modes. For example, games, videos, and other entertainment sources.”
The Form 2 Starehe Boys High School student says when on the app, it offers consumers an alternative for the dopamine rush absorbed from the consumption of Pornography that is mainly available on the Internet, hence ease of access.
Research shows that more and more children are connecting to the Internet using game consoles and mobile devices. Yet, many adults are unaware that such devices’ connectivity is possible.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) notes, “It is crucial to establish what children and young people are doing online as opposed to what adults think they are doing.”
The CA says the Internet has escalated child pornography by increasing the amount of material available, the efficiency of its distribution and the ease of its accessibility. This is made worse by the fact that this material can be accessed anonymously and can be shared.
Nyaga says users are trapped in extensive sexual content consumption, which inspired the thinking around the iGuide application to entertain them instead.
“iguide offers games, music, and other means of entertaining the users. The app is to be set up as a site for accessibility by people and not for business purposes, as I aim to reduce the number of porn users worldwide, bearing in mind that Pornhub has the biggest audience ever,” he says.
“If you see somebody doing something wrong, then you don’t have to copy it; you can learn from it. “That’s how I identified porn addiction and use as a problem, and I hereby want to offer an amicable solution for the people because it has enormous effects on the users,” James Nyaga added.
Through the Rise Program, Nyaga hopes to hone his software development skills. “I see ( learning HTML languages and JavaScript) the silver lining as a stepping stone to university …software development learning is a step toward my career.”
