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Each year, almost 1.5 million children from 12 to 17 years old in Pakistan, experience at least one form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse (UNICEF). These alarming statistics point to a larger systemic issue. The systems designed to prevent abuse, support children and respond when abuse occurs have not kept pace with the risks created by a rapidly expanding digital environment. In Season 4, Episode 12 of Let’s Talk Education, host Areebah Shahid sat down with Sidra Jalil — Founder of InspireMill, President of OPEN Pakistan, and a Community Engagement & Digital Safety Expert — to unpack why child digital safety is an emergency hiding in plain sight.
A Silent Crisis
Online violence against children can take many forms, including sexual exploitation and abuse, cyberbullying, harassment, exploitation, exposure to harmful content and violations of children’s privacy.
According to Sidra, the deeper problem is the absence of safe and trusted avenues through which children can confide and seek help.
“…unfortunately, there is no avenue, there is no platform where those children can openly, in a trusted way, discuss their problems with their parents or siblings.” – Sidra Jalil
Even in open-minded households children cannot discuss what happens to them online. Parents and teachers are also often unaware of the forms of online abuse including the language, slang and platform-specific behaviours children encounter. Hence, they are often unable to recognize what is actually happening. Schools tend to have career counsellors or support staff, but rarely are they trained and sensitized to online abuse.
Supervised Access
Rather than advocating for a ban on devices themselves, Sidra argues for the same logic parents apply to other aspects of their children’s lives.
“You don’t pick up your 15-year-old from school forever, or refuse to ever teach him to drive. You give access according to developmental stages, with supervision, until they’re ready,”– Sidra Jalil
Supervision also needs to be accompanied by real digital literacy, not just restrictions on devices.
The distinction is important: keeping children safe online cannot simply mean keeping them offline. It means building the knowledge, supervision and support systems that allow children to use technology safely as their independence grows.
No Ownership of the Problem
The conversation also highlighted a structural problem within the wider response system: multiple institutions may have responsibilities related to different aspects of online abuse, while families and survivors may still struggle to understand where to go for help.
On the state’s role, Sidra pointed out a structural issue of too many overlapping agencies with no one taking ownership of the problem.
“This case falls under FIA, this under the cyber crime wing, this under PTA. When there’s no single owner, everything gets scattered,”
– Sidra Jalil
Host Areebah Shahid, weighing in from her own experience, raised a related issue: the lack of accessible, gender-sensitive and child-sensitive reporting and response mechanisms for cases involving intimate imagery or harassment.
“…that the quantum of digital violence is [against] either women or children. As a woman, I would not want to speak to a man. But my first responding officer in FIA is only a man. If a woman has intimate image leaked, on top of the trauma she is going through, if she has to sit and explain that to a man, that is criminal negligence. She will never go to a police station.” – Areebah Shahid
Survivors often face a second wave of trauma just to report the crime. Sidra pointed out that continuity of child-safety initiatives is another casualty: programmes are frequently launched, politically tagged, and abandoned within a change of government.
The Way Forward
Sidra made it clear that the solution is not choosing between access and safety. Both require deliberate effort and time. Child online safety is a national emergency, not a side conversation; training teachers and parents alongside kids rather than assuming adults already know more; and investing in reporting systems people actually trust enough.
“Don’t lock the tablets away because kids might break them. Give them the problem, and let them help find the solution — that’s how you build critical thinkers, not just technology users,”
– Sidra Jalil
Pakistan’s children are growing up in a digital world with almost none of the guardrails other countries have already built. Closing that gap will take parents, schools, platforms, and the state – all treating digital safety as their shared responsibility, not someone else’s department.
Watch the full episode now!
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