It’s a sad picture in war-torn countries to see 10-year-olds holding riffles. As a matter of fact, in some of these countries, children could gather live ammos just playing on the streets. These armed children are meant to join in the defence of territories, mainly territories under the control of rebel groups. Whatever the narrative of a country, and however deplorable the war situation might be, nothing justifies an AK47 in the hands of a 10-year-old. As a matter of fact, a gun in the hands of a 10-year-old doesn’t make the territory more secure, it only makes it more dangerous.
Now, in the heat of cyberwarfare, I see a lot of children with smart mobile devices—phones and tablets. As it is, every internet enabled device is a gateway into the battlefield where no one is 100% safe. To have a child own one of these is to grant her unhindered access into the war zone. We might argue and explain that we have active parental controls on these devices—blacklists, whitelists, firewalls, and other features the manufacturers have put in place. How about giving your 5-year-old daughter a loaded pistol and be at ease because it’s on safety? It doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t make sense to give your 5-year-old an access point into a terrain where bullets and bombs are flying around, believing that you have an impregnable firewall around her. Remember what we said at the beginning of this book? We’re at war and there’s no DMZ. In a war situation where we can’t evacuate children, the wisest thing to do is to equip them, not to arm them. Equip them with knowledge of what to do if they find themselves in certain scenarios; equip them with knowledge of the attack methods of the enemy and how to escape unscratched. But once you get them an internet enabled device, with parental controls, you have moved away from equipping them to arming them.
Another angle to this is that when you give a kid a device to connect to the internet, you are actually sharing your network with a 5-year-old who knows nothing about the dangers of sporadic clicking. The same way your child could open the door to strangers at home, she could also open the doors to strangers in cyberspace. You shouldn’t be at ease sharing the network with a 5-year-old. So at what age would it be appropriate to give a child an access point to the battlefield? That’s a whole debate on its own, and we are not going into it here; right now we are too busy conscripting that we can’t pause for family debates. Whatever the case, the bottom line is this, you don’t want your 5-year-old out there in the midst of the dust and chaos of war; if she’s hit by a stray bullet, you would have yourself to blame, and at that point your much-trusted parental controls would release some updates to patch their vulnerabilities, but there will be no updates to patch her wounds.
In light of this, what must you do?
Marching Orders
- If you’re a parent or guardian, do not let children own internet enabled devices any more than you will let them own a gun on safety.
- Supervise children if they are to access the internet for any reason and get them out as quickly as possible.
- Children must be equipped for cyberwarfare, and much of their equipping should be knowledge based.
- Cybersecurity should be included in curriculums right from elementary school or earlier.
- If you are a cybersecurity professional, you could consider putting together some awareness camp or other fun events for kids. You might even consider developing a cybersecurity board game.
- Again, as always, sound the battle cry to those around you—“There’s nothing safe about a gun on safety in the hands of a 5-year-old.”