Fraud, bullying, offensive content and countless traps lurk children

Children are vulnerable subjects

From learning, entertainment to social communication, cyberspace has opened up many opportunities to access knowledge and develop skills for children.

However, along with opportunities come a series of risks that parents cannot predict.

The capital environment is open, difficult to control, and has many potential risks. Meanwhile, MSc. Le Dai Minh, a psychology expert, commented that children's ability to assess risks and control their behavior is still in the process of being perfected.

Therefore, children are vulnerable and imitate harmful, age-inappropriate content, easily falling into online scams or becoming victims of cyber violence.

Recently, Dan Tri reporter reflected on the offensive livestream sessions appearing on TikTok.

A series of dangerous challenges such as using knives, bricks, dropping hot candles on the tongue, and even self-injury to sensitive areas appear and accidentally reach the child.

Besides harmful content, there are "traps" that always lurk children. At the end of March 2026, 4 girls from 14 to 17 years old in Dam Rong 4 commune (Lam Dong) were lured by a stranger on social networks with the offer of "light work, high salary".

Believing the invitation, the children voluntarily left home and took a bus to Ho Chi Minh City to find work. As soon as they arrived at the bus station, the authorities promptly discovered, approached and brought the children back safely to their families.

Another trick that often appears is "online kidnapping" aimed directly at children, students.

With this trick, the suspects often impersonate the police, call to inform the victims that they are involved in serious cases, and then instruct them to stage their own kidnapping to force their families to pay ransom.

In many cases, some victims were forced to isolate themselves in hotels, cutting off contact with their families to create a more realistic "kidnapping" scenario.

It is the state of confusion that makes children susceptible to being led, psychologically manipulated and following the instructions of the scammer.

Another sad situation is cyber violence. Remember that in 2021, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide by drinking pesticides.

Fortunately, the family discovered it in time and took the baby to the emergency room, so the baby was saved after 1 week of mechanical ventilation and intestinal irrigation. The child's father shared that the child's foolish actions were due to being boycotted and bullied by friends on Facebook.

Besides, there are conflicts arising from social networks. For example, the case of H.A.V., a 6th grade student, was beaten by a group of teenagers, forced to perform many acts such as kneeling on the ground, crawling, wiping other people's feet and then recording the clip and posting it on social networks.

The reason comes from a woman named L.D. I think H.A.V. "steal your lover". However, she affirmed that the two sides only texted and interacted on social networks, and did not have a romantic relationship.

In addition to being victims, some incidents also show that children are the subjects of negative acts.

The reason is often because children lack proper control and awareness skills, which easily leads to deviant behaviors.

A typical example is the incident in early May 2026, D.D. (8th grade student) uses AI to create fake sensitive images based on photos of classmate T.L.D. and share with friends.

After that, T.K.C. (in the same class) continued to use Facebook and Messenger to spread these images via social networks, causing false information to quickly spread in the school, seriously affecting the honor and psychology of T.L.D.

In fact, protecting children on the Internet over the years has often focused on educating skills such as recognizing fake news, protecting personal data or behaving civilly online. These contents are still necessary, but in the context of rapidly developing social networks and AI, they are clearly not enough.

A strong "digital shield" for children

According to Clause 2, Article 16 of the Law on Cyber ​​​​Security 2025, for children (under 16 years old) to use value-added services in cyberspace, their father, mother or guardian must register an account with the parent's or guardian's information and is responsible for monitoring and managing the content that children access, post and share information on those service platforms.

Thus, compared to Point a, Clause 3, Article 27 of Decree 147/2024/ND-CP, which only stipulates that when children register on social networks, they must be registered by their parents or guardians with their information, the new law has expanded to value-added services in cyberspace.

Therefore, when children want to use services such as social networks, messaging applications, video platforms, music, online games or e-commerce platforms, parents need to register with their information.

At the same time, parents must be responsible for monitoring and managing their children's use of those platforms.

In addition to the above provisions, Clause 1, Article 16 of the Law emphasizes that children have the right to access information, participate in social activities, play, entertain, protect personal secrets, private life and other rights in cyberspace according to the law.

In addition, Article 16 also clearly stipulates a series of responsibilities for many subjects in the work of protecting children in cyberspace.

Notably, the regulation stipulates that businesses providing services on telecommunications networks, the Internet, and value-added services must be responsible for controlling, preventing and removing content harmful to children, and at the same time building a technical system to detect and handle abusive acts and coordinate with authorities when necessary.

The law also requires agencies, organizations, parents, guardians, teachers, child care providers and other relevant individuals to be responsible for ensuring children's rights and protecting children when participating in cyberspace according to the provisions of the law on children and the provisions of the Cyber ​​Security Law.