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February 18, 2025 | 08:42 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The data of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) revealed that Indonesia is ranked fourth globally and second within ASEAN for the highest number of cases of child sexual abuse materials.
The data was disclosed by Minister of Communication and Digital (Komdigi) Meutya Hafid during the commemoration of Safer Internet Day at her office in Jakarta on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.
“'Indonesia ranks fourth globally and second in the ASEAN region in the number of child pornography cases in the digital space,” Meutya said.
These figures directly proportioned the number of internet users, which recorded 9.17 percent of post-gen Z or 12 years old and below. The children grow up with unrestricted access to the virtual worlds, Meutya said, exacerbated by the lack of adequate protection.
Despite many parents starting to concern themselves with child protection on the internet, Meutya revealed that 22 percent of the children disregard rules of social media restrictions. Moreover, 13 percent of them reportedly have secret social media accounts unknown to their parents or guardians.
“This reflects how attractive the digital spaces are for children, and unsupervised, they can easily get lost within it,” she explained.
Based on these matters, Komdigi moves to establish a child protection regulation, one of which is to restrict their social media use. The ministry also issued a decree to establish a special team to conduct the study and formulate the regulation.
This team has been working since February 3 and consists of representatives from ministries, academics, child education figures, the Save The Children Indonesia organization, psychological institutions, and child protection agencies.
Meutya claimed that the new policy will not restrict children’s access to the internet but rather give control to the parents to authorize the access. “Sanctions will be imposed on electronic system providers (PSE) who violate these rules,” she said.
Defara contributed to the writing of this article.
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