Literature Review of Articles on Cyber Security of Young Children

As much as access to cyber space is a modern necessity, the Internet is also a source of danger for users of all ages. Whether the web is used for entertainment or educational purposes, it has the capacity to jeopardize the individual’s safety via multiple means ranging from the exposition of personal data to cyber-attacks and frauds. However, as much as the Internet is dangerous, it provides even more risks to children. Unable to understand the threats of cyberspace, children are especially susceptible to the danger. The lower the age is, the less protected they are, with age 0 to 6 being the most vulnerable (Straker et al., 2018). Understanding what constitutes risks to young children’s cyber safety is essential in understanding what prevention measures are the most appropriate.

The necessity for cyber protection is common knowledge, yet scientific input is necessary to understand the full extent of threats towards users. The issue is further complicated by the age of the target group, which has the upper limit of six years. This group demands greater attention and control from adults than any other age category because of the accessibility of the Internet and lack of knowledge and skills to protect themselves. Therefore, the search parameters should be limited to the sources, which study cyber threats towards children younger than six years specifically. The goal of this paper is to analyze the existing research on the risks cyber space poses to young children in order to ascertain the proper prevention measures, which would allow children to grow and learn the Internet safely.

Method

Best evidence synthesis was the main tool used to gather the necessary information. Due to the deficit of articles published on the topic of cyber safety specific to young children, the search was complicated by the absence of sources. Many articles study the subjective responses of young children and parents, which compromise the objectiveness of findings. The main challenge was classification of the data available in the articles from subjective to unbiased. Subsequently, all articles had to be analyzed and compared in order to uncover similar or different conclusions and ideas. As the Internet is the major platform, which provides valuable information for this assignment, the use of key terms was essential.

Search Procedure

The databases, which provided the scientific output are JSTOR, Education Resources Information Center, and Wiley Online Library database. Primary search terms were “young children”, “early childhood education”, “Internet exposure”, “cybercitizen”, “cyber safety”, “internet safety”, digital ethics”, “cyber ethics”, and “cyber hygiene”. Before starting the search, two filters were applied in order to target the necessary articles. First, all sources had to be peer-reviewed, which would ensure scientific quality. Second, the date filter limited the search to publications posted between 2017 and 2021. The reason for this specific time frame lies in the rapid development of cyber space and the dynamics of young children’s exposure to the Internet, which requires more recent analyses.

Study Selection: Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The ultimate goal is to describe the state of research in Early Childhood and Care research on cybersecurity, analyze their methods and participants, which would allow to ascertain the most appropriate protective measures for children in cyber space. As has already been mentioned, the first inclusion criterion was the date limit. The pull of articles is limited to the ones published after 2016. As the Internet is a highly dynamic technology, the specifics of users’ experience with it are also subject to change. As a result, information about cyber space quickly becomes outdated, which renders sources published more than five years ago irrelevant. The reviewed literature comprises exclusively peer-reviewed scholarly articles.

Also, articles had to study the problem of cyber security of young children. This premise necessitates two inclusion criteria, one of which is the presence of the Internet in the body of articles. The other one is the focus on children younger than eight years. This age group differs from the older children and adolescents, which results in different threats and protective measures. For example, unlike older children, toddlers are not able to identify a threat, which does not harm them physically (Levine et al., 2019). Therefore, mediating their gadget use is more important since they cannot do it on their own.

Naturally, some articles contain information on all age groups, including children below eight years. However, the conclusions presented by them apply to all groups indiscriminately. T