The rapid advancement of digital technologies has profoundly reshaped childhood experiences worldwide, offering both significant opportunities and unprecedented risks. The need for a more comprehensive legal framework that deals with digital rights and the online safety of children has been very apparent in Sri Lanka. This paper examines the emerging challenges faced by children in digital environments and critically looks at the extent to which the current law and policy regime of Sri Lanka is sufficient to protect those children against threats like exposure to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, privacy invasion, and limited digital literacy. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the European Union and United States legal regimes, the study highlights significant regulatory gaps in the Sri Lankan context. The research employs a doctrinal legal methodology, supplemented by children’s rights theory and legal realism as its theoretical framework. It proposes targeted legal reforms, including the enactment of a dedicated Online Child Protection Act, enhancement of data protection laws, and integration of online safety provisions into national child protection policies. The study concludes by emphasizing the necessity of a dynamic, child-centered regulatory approach that ensures Sri Lankan children’s safety and empowerment in the digital age.
The increasing use of digital technologies has significantly expanded children's access to education, communication, and information in Kenya. At the same time, it has exposed children to a growing range of cyber risks, including cyberbullying, online sexual exploitation and abuse, cyber grooming, identity theft, privacy breaches, exposure to harmful online content, and digital fraud. While the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 guarantees children's rights, dignity, privacy, and protection from abuse, and several statutes including the Kenya Information and Communications Act, the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, the Data Protection Act, the Children Act, 2022, and the Sexual Offences Act contain provisions relevant to child online protection, their implementation remains fragmented and insufficient to address the evolving nature of cyberspace. This article critically analyses the legal challenges affecting the protection of children in cyberspace in Kenya through a doctrinal examination of constitutional provisions, legislation, judicial decisions, and applicable international and regional human rights instruments. It argues that the principal legal challenge is not the absence of laws but the lack of a coherent and integrated child online protection framework capable of addressing emerging digital threats. The article identifies fragmented legislation, overlapping institutional mandates, weak enforcement mechanisms, inadequate regulation of digital platforms, jurisdictional difficulties in investigating cross-border cyber offences, limited digital literacy, and insufficient child-sensitive policies as major impediments to effective protection. It further contends that Kenya's existing legal framework has not adequately adapted to the rapid evolution of digital technologies, thereby exposing children to persistent online harms. The article concludes that strengthening child online protection requires comprehensive legislative reform, harmonisation of existing laws, enhanced institutional coordination, greater accountability for digital service providers, improved cross-border cooperation, and the development of child-centred digital governance policies that align with Kenya's constitutional obligations and international human rights commitments.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a problem faced by university students across Africa, with social media becoming a common environment where the problem is made visible and can worsen. But with the proliferation of mobile phones and internet access, the platforms have revolutionized the way students connect but have also created opportunities for different types of GBV such as digital harassment, stalking, revenge porn, and cyberbullying, targeting female and vulnerable students. The short-term effects can pose a threat to health and well-being, but the damage also impedes progress toward gender equality and academic achievement. This policy brief investigates how digital platforms can perpetuate gender-based violence among university students in Africa. It is based on recent research and sees social media as a source of risk and a possible venue for action. Social gender norms, poor internet literacy, limited statutory protections and inadequate institutional remedies continue to be normalized and are also part of the conditions for online GBV. The solution requires joint action by politicians, educational institutions, Civil Society Organizations, technical businesses and student groups. Universities, in contrast, can assist victims in accessing help by means of support systems which can include counselling services and computerized reporting systems. Social media, when used with caution, can be a tool to prevent, not perpetuate, gender-based violence. Strategic and coordinated approaches that address the root causes of online GBV can go a long way toward reducing its adverse impact on university students in Africa. The brief calls for gender-sensitive internet literacy campaigns, strong legal and regulatory institutions to hold abusers accountable, and awareness efforts to create safer online environments. It is intended to support policymakers, researchers, and development practitioners to protect digital spaces and promote gender equality across the continent.
Digital environments have reshaped patterns of cybercrime vulnerability in the United States, particularly in relation to identity theft and online fraud. This narrative review examines recent literature on how digital behaviour and sociological determinants contribute to unequal exposure to cybercrime victimisation. The review focuses on studies published between 2020 and 2026 and synthesises evidence from criminology, sociology, behavioural science and information systems. The analysis is organised around four major themes: digital routine activities and behavioural exposure, socioeconomic and demographic stratification of vulnerability, behavioural and cognitive mechanisms of victimisation, and platform-mediated and algorithmic cyber risks. The reviewed literature indicates that cybercrime vulnerability is shaped not only by technical weaknesses but also by online routines, trust-based decision-making, risk perception, digital guardianship and structural inequalities. Age, socioeconomic status, education, income and digital literacy appear to influence both exposures to cyber threats and the ability to adopt protective practices. Older adults may face risks linked to limited digital familiarity and targeted scams, whereas younger users may experience risk through high engagement, overconfidence and frequent online activity. The review also highlights emerging concerns related to social media, financial technologies, algorithmic environments, artificial intelligence and automated deception. Although awareness and education remain important, the evidence suggests that knowledge alone is insufficient to prevent victimisation. More integrated approaches are needed, combining user education, behavioural interventions, platform responsibility and equitable policy design. The review identifies major gaps in longitudinal research, intersectional analysis, platform governance and sociotechnical theory development.
This article explores the growing prevalence of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in South Asia within the context of rapid digital expansion and persistent structural inequalities. While increased internet penetration across Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka has enabled greater access to information, freedom of expression, and economic participation, it has simultaneously amplified gendered forms of harm in digital spaces. Manifestations of TFGBV, including cyberstalking, doxxing, image-based abuse, and online sexual harassment, reflects a spillover of entrenched patriarchal violence into How to Cite this Article digital spaces rather than a completely new phenomenon. Adopting a triangulated qualitative methodology, the study combines doctrinal legal analysis with a comparative and socio-legal approach to assess the adequacy of legal frameworks and their enforcement mechanisms. The findings suggest that legal responses across the region remain fragmented, morality-driven, and heavily reliant on criminalization, often failing to address the consent-based, intersectional, and rapidly evolving nature of digital harms. Legal ambiguities, weak enforcement mechanisms, and limited institutional capacity further widen the gap between formal protections and the lived realities of survivors.The article further underscores how socio-cultural barriers, including victim-blaming attitudes, honor-based social norms, and unequal access to digital technologies, restrict reporting and impede access to justice. It argues that TFGBV not only inflicts harm on individuals but also restricts women’s participation in public and digital spaces, thereby undermining democratic engagement and civic inclusion. It calls for a shift toward survivor-centered, rights-based approaches integrating legal reform, platform accountability, digital literacy, and broader processes of social transformation.
The strategic use of social media for public relations (PR) in Indian higher education has been studied largely through the lens of posting frequency and engagement volume, leaving the governance logics that produce institutional communication comparatively unexamined. This paper examines how a private, autonomous, Catholic minority women's college in Hyderabad negotiates its digital public presence from a hybrid position between institutional independence and publicly funded compliance. Drawing on a case study of St. Francis College for Women, the analysis synthesises an ethnographic interview with the Principal and a trace analysis of 644 public posts published on the institution's official Facebook and Instagram handles between April and December 2025, each read with its full ledger of reach, views, reactions, shares and comments. It is found that the institution translates, rather than imposes, its Francisian ethos through a digital pastoral pulpit, contextualised value pedagogy and asynchronous care; that crisis learning from a 2019 dress-code episode replaced institutional silence with proactive, empathetic communication; and that state mandates such as Unnat Bharat Abhiyan are converted from evidence of activity into evidence of impact. Across the corpus, a single structural pattern is observed: the intensity of administrative control over a piece of content is inversely related to its voluntary circulation. The administrator emerges as digital architect, warden, compliance officer and brand manager simultaneously. The findings extend Foucauldian and Goffmanian accounts of institutional order to algorithmically mediated educational settings and carry practical implications for values-led institutions negotiating audit culture and marketisation.
