The playground isn't the only place children need protection

By Nur Amyza Shazweena Amrul Nazri and Dr. Mohd Istajib Mokhtar

Today, a child might learn to swipe on an iPad before they even learn to walk. My little brother certainly did. By the time he was three, he could bypass a lock screen, navigate YouTube Kids, and throw a staggering tantrum when the device was taken away. For years, family jokes centered around him—the resident tech wizard, the screen addict, the toddler who preferred cartoons to conversation. He is ten now, and things have genuinely changed, but only because our parents finally enforced strict screen time limits. Today, he reads, plays outside, and actually talks to us at the dinner table.

But here is what I keep thinking about. Not every child has parents who figured that out. More worrying still, screen time is only the beginning of the problem. Every day, children across Malaysia and around the world are navigating digital spaces that were never designed with them in mind. Behind the colorful apps and viral videos lurk aggressive data collection, exposure to harmful content, and predators who exploit the very platforms children love most. This is not just a parenting problem; it is a legal crisis, an ethical failure, and a challenge that demands urgent, coordinated action.

When the fun becomes a trap

Let us start with what many families already sense but rarely name clearly. A 2023 review published in the medical journal Cureus, conducted by researchers from PES Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in India, found that excessive screen time in children is unequivocally linked to poor sleep, reduced physical activity, weakened social skills, and lower academic performance. The researchers noted that multitasking across multiple screens—watching a video while playing a game, for instance—is especially damaging to executive functioning, the vital mental skill children need to learn, plan, and grow.

A separate systematic review published in BMC Psychology, covering data from 50 studies and over 1.9 million adolescents, concluded that weekday smartphone use consistently diminishes mental well-being. For girls in particular, heavy social media use significantly raises the risk of depression. Critically, this is not happening because children are weak or parents are careless. It is happening because platforms are deliberately engineered to be addictive. As noted in the Malay Mail by researchers Siti Umairah Mohamad Idris and Mohd Istajib Mokhtar, these apps do not just entertain. They deploy sophisticated algorithms that track behavior and serve increasingly engaging content to hold attention as long as possible. When young children are still developing basic impulse control, the platforms almost always win the battle for their attention.

The data problem nobody talks about

Beyond the visible effects of screen time lies a quieter, less visible danger regarding what happens to children’s data. Every click, search, and video watch generates lucrative information that technology companies collect, analyze, and often monetize. Children cannot meaningfully consent to this data harvesting. They cannot read a 47-page terms of service agreement, let alone understand its long-term implications.

In a 2024 policy brief titled Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment, World Vision International argues that when children’s personal data is commercially exploited without genuine consent, it does not merely raise privacy concerns—it constitutes a direct rights violation. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child agrees. In General Comment No. 25 (2021), the Committee extended the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into digital environments, explicitly affirming that companies must consider the impact of their platforms on children. This includes children who never signed up themselves, but whose lives are affected by the adults around them who did.

Conversely, Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2010 makes no specific mention of children. There are no child-specific data protections, no minimum age requirements built into the law, and no clear liability for platforms that exploit young users’ information. In this respect, Malaysian children are comparatively far less protected than their peers in Europe, where the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) strictly requires verifiable parental consent before any child’s data can be processed.

A legal and ethical reckoning

The international legal picture is slowly shifting to address these gaps. The United Kingdom’s Age-Appropriate Design Code, part of the Data Protection Act 2018, requires digital platforms to be child-safe by default, meaning privacy settings must inherently protect rather than expose. A 2023 evaluation by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office found that after the Code was introduced, child-friendly privacy settings on major platforms increased by 45%, while risky contact options dropped by 30%. Taking it a step further, France passed a law in 2023 that bars children under 15 from creating social media accounts without explicit parental consent.

However, legal frameworks alone are not enough if they are not enforced, or if they simply do not exist at all. As researchers Cai Yanling, Li Bingling, and Mohd Istajib Mokhtar wrote in the Life News Agency, tackling digital harms to children requires more than isolated legal fixes. It demands a robust, multi-layered response encompassing regulation, platform accountability, digital literacy education, and strong community support systems. Importantly, as studies in Frontiers in Psychology have argued, the goal should not be to lock children out of digital life entirely. Children possess a fundamental right to learn, connect, and grow online. The real task is to make those spaces genuinely safe, not to pretend they do not exist.

What must happen next

Ethically, the responsibility cannot rest with parents alone, nor can it rest solely with governments. Technology companies that knowingly design platforms to maximize children’s engagement, while concealing what they know about the resulting harms, are making a moral choice. That choice deserves to be named, scrutinized, and strictly regulated.

The necessary steps are clear, even if the political will to act on them is still developing. Governments, including Malaysia’s, urgently need child-specific digital safety laws. These frameworks must hold platforms legally accountable for harm, require privacy by default, and mandate age-appropriate design. Technology companies must be forced to stop treating child protection as an optional feature. Furthermore, digital literacy must enter Malaysian schools not as an elective, but as a core life skill taught from the primary level onward. Parents also need real, accessible support. They require actionable tools, widespread awareness campaigns, and dedicated community resources available in Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, and Tamil, rather than just dismissive advice to take the tablet away.

Most fundamentally, the burden cannot keep falling on families alone. While some parents manage to figure it out, many never get the chance to intervene before the damage is done. Every child deserves protection that does not depend on luck. The devices are getting smarter, and it is long past time our laws and ethics caught up.