Students warned of dangers of using online media

Prakob Leenapasanan, Director-General of the Central Juvenile and Family Court, presided over the opening ceremony of the campaign, which uses the slogan ‘Online dangers are more dangerous than you think’, at Satree Phuket School yesterday (Aug 15).

Joining Mr Prakob was Teerapon Mitprayoon, Chief Justice of Phuket Provincial Juvenile and Family Court, as well as fellow judges, associate judges and students from five schools.

“Information and communication technology are changing rapidly, and affecting the way of life of people in society. It is the era of borderless communication leading to the emergence of new social networks, and according to statistics Thai children and youths spend most of their time on information technology media,” Mr Prakob said.

“The trend of using computers, the Internet and mobile phones among children and youths is clearly increasing. As a result, social media is increasingly playing an important role in daily life. Many of today’s problems come from online media, causing huge losses and impacts, especially among children and youths,” he said.

“Therefore, it is necessary to work together to prevent and solve problems, especially in creating media literacy so that they do not fall victim to the media. We need to raise awareness of the dangers of using online media. Young people must have skills in media access and be able to analyse and evaluate media from the Internet effectively,” Mr Prakob added.

Considering the prevalence and high Internet usage among Thai children, they were more vulnerable to cyber threats than the global average, Mr Prakob continued.

“With current technology, there are creeping threats to the health of Thai children and youths that can affect them severely and rapidly,” he said.

“This includes game addiction and violent content leading to imitation behaviour. It also includes pornography leading to sexual harassment, online gambling leading to gambling addiction, and cyber ​​bullying leading to depression and suicide,” he said.

“All of these problems are from online threats. All of them affect the long-term attitudes and behaviours of children and youths. Therefore, all parties must work together to manage children and youths to be on the right path for using the online world, for the future of a good nation and to become an important force for the country.

“Therefore, children and young people are asked to focus on and apply the knowledge gained [from the campaign] to the maximum benefit for ourselves and for our families,” Mr Prakob concluded.