o:p>As the number of children and adolescents involved in online gambling reaches an alarming level, the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) and experts have called for greater supervision from parents over their children’s use of the internet.
A new government task force established last week to curtail rampant online gambling has found indications that 80,000 children below the age of 10 and 440,000 of those aged 10 to 20 had engaged in online gambling. These age groups made up around 13 percent of the total number of some 4 million people engaged in online gambling. The task force did not reveal the time period that these incidents took place.
Child protection agency the KPAI described the numbers of children and adolescents involved in online gambling as alarming and blamed the incidents on the lack of parental supervision of their children’s use of the internet.
“On the one hand, there are parents who have the skills to teach digital literacy to their children, but they are [too] busy [to make time for their children],” KPAI commissioner Kawiyan told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
“But there are also parents who actually have time but they don’t have enough knowledge on digital literacy. [In some cases,] children know more about digital technology than their parents. This becomes a problem [because] parental supervision of their children’s activities is crucial.”
Kawiyan said the KPAI, a government-sanctioned independent agency, found that the content of online gambling games and advertisements on social media were often “designed with attractive themes and graphics to appeal to children.”
He called on the government to help raise the awareness of parents about the dangers of online gambling on their children and to block access to online gambling websites.