There was a report published in a local newspaper detailing how a teenager befriended a stranger in a chatroom on the Internet, agreed to meet up with him for a date, and was subsequently raped by the man.

This is not the first time such an incident has occurred, you may say, but these incidents are likely to be repeated – what with the Net increasingly becoming an integral part of the lives of children and young people, a virtual place where they spend a good portion of their , every day.

While the youngsters may be more technologically savvy than most adults and are adept at surfing the Net, the fact remains that they are just kids.

As in real life, the virtual world requires one to be street smart and able to make judgment calls that need a certain level of mental and social maturity which only can be achieved when one has clocked in enough years and experience. If not, one could easily fall prey to all sorts of predators online. And for kids, as seen in the news report cited, this can be tragic.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) also has noted this fact and adopted the theme, Protecting children in cyberspace to mark World Telecommunication and Information Society (WSIS) Day.

Recognizing the needs of children and young people and their safety online, ITU has affirmed the need to "strengthen action to protect children from abuse and defend their rights in the context of ICT".

ITU’s Child Online Protection initiative is in line with its mandate to establish the foundations for a safe and secure cyberworld for future generations.

The argument behind this initiative is that a decade ago, there were just 182 million people using the Internet globally. But by early this year, there were over 1.5 billion Internet users worldwide, and over 400 million of them had access to broadband.

As the Internet grows steadily as a common resource, ITU cites that there are increasing dangers online, particularly for children.

This point is backed by the fact that over 60 per cent of children and teenagers talk in chatrooms on a daily basis, with 75 per cent of the children online willing to share personal information about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services. Studies have found that one in five children will be targeted by a predator or pedophile each year.

Of course, there are suggestions to bar children and identified predators from certain sites on the Net to keep children safe. Even if there are laws in place to do this, technology is always a pace ahead.

The Internet will only get bigger, and it’s up to all of us to make it a safer place for all.