Study on Needs and Risks in the Field of Digital Safety of Children and Adolescents in Ukraine

Country: Ukraine Source: Finn Church Aid Please refer to the attached file. The digital environment is one of the key spaces of everyday life for children and adolescents, bringing together learning, communication, leisure, and the formation of social ties. The use of social media, messaging applications, video platforms, and online games represents a stable and intensive practice for the majority of school-aged children in Ukraine. At the same time, the digital environment creates conditions for the emergence of a range of risks related to safety, psychoemotional well-being, privacy, and the social vulnerability of children and adolescents. In existing international and national studies, digital risks for children typically include exposure to harmful or traumatic content, cyberbullying, online grooming, unwanted contact with adults, engagement in risky online practices, as well as violations of privacy and personal data security. A synthesis of available sources indicates that, in terms of typology, these risks in Ukraine generally correspond to European and global trends; however, the Ukrainian context is characterised by an elevated level of vulnerability among children due to the combination of social, psychological, and security-related factors. The full-scale war plays a particularly significant role in shaping this vulnerability. Forced displacement, prolonged periods of distance or blended learning, fragmentation of social ties, increased psycho-emotional burden, and unequal access to adult support all intensify risks for children in the digital environment. Available analytical sources indicate that internally displaced children, children from families with lower levels of digital literacy, as well as adolescents in early and middle adolescence, face a substantially higher lik...

Original source: Relief Web