‘Single Aayi Varoo, Mingle Aayi Madangoo' (Come singles, let's mingle): This was the title of one of the chatroom sessions of Clubhouse, an audio-based social media application which is fast gaining popularity. The session attracted lots of teenagers who interacted and exchanged their personal details with strangers who attended the chatroom. This has raised concerns among child rights defenders about the safety of such apps when it comes to children. As a result, child welfare authorities and police in Kerala are planning to closely monitor activities of children in Clubhouse chat rooms.
Clubhouse is an invitation-only social media app, where users can communicate through voice chat rooms that accommodate thousands of people across the world. The chat rooms host live discussions on various topics and people can participate in the discussions as listeners or speakers.
Child welfare authorities and police have already noticed that hundreds of children in the state are actively participating in ‘live proposal’ sessions as well as late-night discussions on Clubhouse, and caution that this could make children vulnerable to online predators. To address this, the cyber wing of Kerala Police decided to launch Chiri, a special online campaign against the loopholes of social media platforms including Clubhouse, in all school across the state in the coming days. Meanwhile, Childline authorities have decided to launch an awareness programme focusing on the usage of Clubhouse this week too.
Even though Clubhouse is an invitation-only application, it is being pointed out that there are several fake profiles in the social media platform and these profiles are active in chat room discussions. Renowned actors in Malayalam Prithviraj Sukumaran and Tovino Thomas recently came up with the clarification that they are not on Clubhouse after their fake profiles actively participated in live discussions in chat rooms.
Anand V S of Cyberdome, a premier facility of Kerala Police to prevent cybercrime and to ensure cyber security, pointed out that because of the sheer volume of live discussions and chat rooms on Clubhouse, it can be difficult for children and adolescents to discern fake profiles. “Children are often not made aware of the risk factors, and so, will not usually think whether the profiles they are interacting with are original or fake. We are closely monitoring the activities of child account holders,” he said.
Dr Jostin Francis, consultant psychiatrist at Government general hospital Kalppetta, Wayanad, who is also associated with the ‘Chiri’ programme of Kerala police, said that children can be vulnerable to falling into traps of predators and anti-social elements disguising their real identities on Clubhouses. “There are chances for children themselves using fake IDs to use Clubhouse to avoid monitoring by parents,” Dr Francis said. He added that it is not possible for police to monitor all users on the platform, so parents could possibly limit usage of smartphones by children and educate them to use social media responsibly.
“We are yet to receive any complaint regarding abuse or cheating with regards to children on Clubhouse. But there are chances for such complaints in the coming days,” said Anand.
However, law enforcement authorities are likely to run into another hurdle – as per Clubhouse rules, the platform will start recording the audio in a chat room only if a user reports online abuse in that particular room. So, even an official investigation agency cannot collect records of chat rooms as material evidence from Clubhouse, unless a user has reported abuse in a chat room, pointed out Anand.
“There is no minimum age limit for people to set up an account on Clubhouse. We also noticed that many teenagers have added the details of their Instagram and Facebook accounts on their Clubhouse profile. This enables other people to easily access the account holders, after preliminary level communication through chat rooms. People can also arrange for closed room voice chats on Clubhouse itself,” Anand added. “We will launch an online campaign programme on cyber security in the coming weeks, as students are widely using mobile phones for their online class purposes nowadays.”
Childline authorities in Malappuram have already launched various awareness sessions for children using Clubhouse. “We were observing many chatrooms where teenagers are active for the last one week. They are active in ‘proposal sessions’ and ‘profile picture rating sessions.’ Many children also tend to get swayed by some praise and validation. We noted that many of them were not hesitant to hand over their Instagram account details or Facebook account details to strangers during live sessions. Most of them are class 10 and higher secondary students. They are not aware that such interactions could have adverse consequences. Online predators may use such information for harassment, abuse or exploitation,” said Anwar Karakkadan, Childline coordinator of Malappuram.
The state Programme Officer of Childline, Manoj Joseph, said that a state-level awareness programme will be launched for children in the coming weeks.
According to Anwar, children should be careful while attending discussions in Clubhouse. "Children should avoid sharing personal details with strangers while attending discussions. They should not attach other social media accounts with their Clubhouse profile. They should leave the room if they feel uncomfortable with the discussions going on there. We will educate children on such precautionary measures during our awareness programmes," he said.
Childline authorities on June 12 issued a detailed guideline for children and parents on the steps to be taken while using social media.
According to the guideline, parents should spend time with their children to understand the nature of children's social media interventions and they should educate children about potential traps on social media. It also suggested that parents should fix a particular time duration daily for children to use smart phones and ensure that children are in common areas in the house when doing so.
“Parents should encourage the children to share any incidents of online abuse with them and to report any such incident to police or Childline authorities," it said.