gisw13_chapters

and the internet; g) free access to porn in publicinternet cafés as well as easy access to “parentaladvisory” content through indiscriminate accessto pirate DVDs; h) the social perception of internetaddiction as something positive due to the high internetservice costs in Bolivia.HighlightsResearch by the REDES Foundation demonstratesthat a great majority of teenagers and youth in socialnetworks expose themselves to the violation oftheir human rights. In May 2012 there were 966,560teenagers and youth in Bolivia, between the agesof 13 and 24, with personal accounts on the socialnetwork Facebook, making them potential victimsof digital violence and cyber crimes.A study by the REDES Foundation with 700 studentsin 2010 showed that there is a high rate ofexposure of new generations to violence through theinternet and mobile phones. In the city of La Paz:• Ten out of ten students do not know there areways to find specialised information quickly andeffectively on the internet.• Seven out of ten students divert from theirsearch when pop-ups or hyperlinks emerge.• Seven out of ten students accept unknown contactsin social networks and display themselvesover the webcam or exchange photographs.• Three out of ten then go on to engage with thesepreviously unknown individuals in casual encounters(frequently sexual).• They have no references for finding informationabout how to exercise their own human rights.• The direct relationship between the use of themobile phone and the exercise of their humanrights is unknown.The 2012 research, which included data collectionfrom 1,121 adolescents, also revealed that:• Ten out of ten teenagers watched school fightsfilmed by Bolivian students on their mobilephones and/or over the internet.• Ten out of ten students received frequently falseand fraudulent messages (phishing) on theirphones, including false awards which turnedout to be related to cases of deceptive recruitmentof people for human trafficking and/orsexual violence.• Ten out of ten know a student whose email accountor game account has been hacked.• Four out of ten students acknowledge they havelost access to their accounts due to the use ofpublic internet cafés. (Subsequently, researchhas shown that internet café managers use softwareto spy on the internet browsing of womenand girls.)• Ten out of ten students go online at public internetcafés, despite having internet access intheir own homes or the homes of relatives andfriends. Internet cafés are social spaces.• All internet cafés lack the necessary securitymeasures to protect children and adolescentusers.In addition, regarding the educationalinstitutions, we found that:• The educational community is not prepared to addressthe issue of digital violence in their schools.• Parents, teachers and educational authoritiesfear technology, and feel protected by the myththat their children and students have a betterunderstanding of technology than they do.• Adolescents do not in fact have a deeper understandingof technology; they only know how touse commercial applications which in fact exposethem to risks and cyber crime.• There are a series of daily internet practices thatviolate the rights of girls and young women,including misogyny online, digital sexual violence,sexism and patriarchy online, homophobia,racism and xenophobia.Final considerationsOur country has no specific legislation on cybercrime, and there are no conceptual or methodologicalframeworks that facilitate a comprehensiveapproach to the social effects of internet and mobiledevice use on new generations. It is also importantto stress the particular vulnerability of girls andwomen in the Bolivian digital culture.The REDES Foundation (based in La Paz) andCREPUM Foundation (in Cochabamba) are workingon the definition of digital violence, generating newfindings about a new crime: digital sexual violence.Research on this subject is an unprecedented contributionto Bolivia and Latin America.The research aims at educating new generationsin general, and women in particular, to configuretheir control over their privacy in all email, socialnetwork, gaming and personal and public user accounts,including mobile phone applications.74 / Global Information Society Watch