International Policy Trends for Protecting Young People Online
The protection of young people using the Internet has become an important international policy issue. The OECD has suggested “Recommendation of the Council on the Protection of Children Online” to the international community in 2012 (OECD, 2012). This Recommendation refers countries to the importance of promoting international cooperation addressing cross-border internet risks for youth.
Byron (2008) worked with the British Government to make policy recommendations based on the results of interviews with adolescents. Following these results, it is necessary to clarify the division between the government and the private sector and to mention the need for coordinated policies by multiple stakeholders. In response to Byron, the British Office of Communications published “Ofcom's Response to the Byron Review” in March 2008 to improve media literacy by both young people and parents and related industries. It points out that it is important for organizations to promote self-regulation. In addition, it recommends two self-regulatory measures to industry groups: regulations on content distribution and regulations on user access (Office of Communications, 2008).
Livingstone et. al. (2012) conducted a questionnaire-based survey with young people of 25 EU member states, and the results are utilized in EU youth protection policies. According to the survey results, the risks that young people face on the Internet include child pornography, online bullying, reception of sexual messages, contact with strangers, harmful contents, and misuse of personal information. Policy measures against risk mention the need to provide parents with information, implement technical protection from industry, and develop the digital skills of young people.
Japan’s Internet Youth Protection Policy and Social Situations
In recent years, there has been an increase in young people using portable devices, such as mobile phones and smartphones that can be connected to the Internet. Despite the advantages of using these devices, there are also various negatives. Particularly, there needs to be a system of protective policies for young people with poor coping abilities or at risk.
Under such social circumstances, in 2008 the Act on Development of an Environment that Provides Safe and Secure Internet Use for Young People (Act No. 79 of 2008) was enforced in Japan (Cabinet Office, 2009). Article 6 of this act stipulates that the responsibility of the guardian is to “manage Internet use by young people appropriately through utilization of software for filtering content harmful to young people and other methods, and promote young people’s acquisition of skills for the appropriate utilization of the Internet” (Cabinet Office, 2009). The article suggests that parents play an important role in protecting young people using the Internet.
However, it is difficult to say that youth protection measures by parents have been practiced to a sufficient level preventing the occurrence of problems. According to a survey by the Cabinet Office (2017), 69.6% of parents whose children were junior high school students responded that they had family rules, while only 57.5% of junior high school students indicated there were family rules. There is a discrepancy of 12.1 percentage points between parents and junior high school students. The divergence is even larger in high school students: 63.7% of parents responded that they had family rules, while 50.2% of high school students indicated the same. Therefore, the gap between parents and high school students was 13.5 percentage points.