Empowering Parents to Keep Their Children Safe from Cyberbullying
Background
Collaborating Entities: SIIRD, Alerteenze and Panasonic R&D center in Singapore
Collaboration: The Singapore Israel Industrial R&D Foundation (SIIRD) is a co-operation between the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Israel Innovation Authority to promote, facilitate and support joint industrial R&D collaboration between Singapore-based companies and Israel-based companies across different industries, and to provide research grants and government funding for SMEs
Who is Alerteenz:
Alerteenz – Providing parents greater awareness to their children’s distress signs as reflected by the child’s smartphone activity without violating their privacy.
PRDCSG – Panasonic R&D Center Singapore contributes significantly to the company’s global R&D and business, aimed at rapidly transforming demanded technologies into tangible results to meet the needs of a fast-changing world.
Successful Innovation
The Challenge:
The digital world has made it difficult for parents to keep their children safe, especially on mobile devices. Children are receiving smartphones earlier than ever and begin managing their social lives online and out of sight. They are creating massive amounts of data – and parents are struggling to keep up. This has led to a dramatic increase in cyberbullying and other cyber-crimes against children.
The biggest roadblock to creating solutions to help parents protect their children online is being able to effectively identify suspicious or unusual events, and then notify parents in real-time. Children are creating massive amounts of data every day. Each child takes an average of 500 photos, makes 135 calls, and send or receive nearly 15,000 messages per month. Parents are struggling to find the signal in the noise, and children are left vulnerable as a result.
An effective child safety solution must also take the privacy of the child into account. Invasive spying tools or overbearing control apps harm the trust and communication between parents and children and create an adversarial relationship. We need to be able to empower parents with the information they need to keep their children safe without compromising children’s privacy, and increase trust and communication between parents and children in the process.
UK & USA research found that more than 50% of kinds in the ages of 8-15 have experience cyberbullying. Effective intervention and prediction can greatly reduce the global cost in short and long terms.
The Innovation:
Bosco’s machine learning algorithms can predict threats to children before they happen by analyzing children’s behavioral patterns and detecting any deviations, threats, or suspicious events. In the case of a potential threat, Bosco send parents a notification in real-time, telling them that their child might need their attention and protection. Current competitors, in contrast, leave parents to make sense of mountains of raw data themselves, or attempt (and fail) to limit and control children’s online activity.
Bosco will dramatically lower the occurrence of cyberbullying, harassment, and cases of child exploitation by giving parents the information they need to protect their children. Bosco’s actionable insights draw parents’ attention at the right time, while they can still prevent the threats to their children, providing parents with desperately needed peace of mind
Bosco’s goal is to give parents the information they need while it is still possible to prevent cyber-crimes against children from occurring. With Bosco, parents do not waste time setting up complicated dashboards or reviewing thousands of messages. After a simple setup process, parents begin to receive alerts that help catalyze parent-child communication right when it matters. This unique approach allows Bosco to detect, report, and help prevent threats without compromising children’s privacy.
About the Collaborating Companies
Alerteenz
Alerteenz was founded in 2015. Its main target is to empower parents taking care of their children by enabling them to be more aware for signs of distress as reflected from child’s smartphone activity, without violating the child’s privacy, using technologies into tangible results and innovating to meet the needs of the fast-changing world. Alerteenz brings together great expertise in both R&D & marketing abilities and works side by side with psychologist and experts for harassment in online environment.
PRDCSG
Panasonic R&D Center Singapore (PRDCSG) is a wholly owned R&D arm of Panasonic Corporation, which contributes significantly to the company’s global R&D and business. Founded in 1990, its mission is to build a “Technology Innovation Hub”; aimed at rapidly transforming demanded technologies into tangible results and innovating to meet the needs of a fast-changing world. PRDCSG’s business activities covers three core areas: R&D undertakings specializing in video, audio and networking technologies, B2B cloud solutions such as remote monitoring systems and IP consultancy, which covers the US, EU, China, India, Japan and ASEAN jurisdictions. PRDCSG has direct experience in providing technologies and proof-of-concept in audio, video, communication mobile networking and IoT System for connected aircon for commercialization.
The Collaboration
Israel Innovation Authority (formerly the Office of the Chief Scientist of Israel), has been supporting Alerteenz and PRDCSG’s joint development of an innovative child safety and parent-child communication application since December 2016 through the SIIRD grant program. SIIRD is providing close to a $1 million grant required to complete development over the next two years. SIIRD was integral in facilitating the partnership between Alerteenz and PRDCSG, bringing together the unique skill sets required to build and commercialize Bosco’s technology and platform.
The Global Impact:
Bosco is tackling one of the most important societal challenges – the safety of our children, especially in regards to cyberbullying. The lack of parental involvement in their kids’ social lives has led to massive increase in cyberbullying occurrences, and the associated social and economic costs are severe. There are significant implications for the short and long-term mental health, self-esteem, education, and life prosperity of cyberbullying victims. The number of incidents is enormous, and the problem is becoming more widespread every year.
Research held in the UK and the USA found that more than 50% of kids in the age of 8-15 have experienced cyberbullying one or more times, and 20% of them had suicidal thoughts. In addition, 38% of the bullied kids said they did not tell their parents or guardians.
Effective intervention and prediction can greatly reduce the global cost in both the short and long terms. Bosco’s actionable insights and predictive ability enable parents to better safeguard their children from online threats. This safety will lead to children who are more physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy, who will grow up to be more productive members of society.