Family and Children in the Digital Age: Creating a safe online environment for children

Every child seeks to have a role-model. For me that was the anime character Captain Future. To the iconic soundtrack of the German version this mixture of scientist and interstellar secret agent saved entire civilizations from terrible villains as well as natural and man-made disasters as he travelled across time and physical dimensions. Tragically, the captain’s parents were murdered by the father of his arch enemy. Hence, he was raised by a triad consisting of the robot Greg (possessing an artificially intelligent brain), the android Otho and the ‘living brain’ Prof. Simon Wright. By the time I realized that my childhood hero was permanently surrounded, supported and even raised by machines who were his ‘family’ I was more than thirty years old. This is a relevant insight, since it shows on the one hand that children accept the world as it is. On the other, we hardly reconsider what became a dear and important part of our childhood. Children do not question the influence of technology on their lives. They do not take ‘traditional’ human interaction for granted. Certainly, this is a great asset since it is possible for them to become a ‘digital native’. Nevertheless, this potentially bears great danger in an age where more personal data is permanently created, collected, analysed and stored than ever before.