Ministry to promote sex education through YouTube
PUTRAJAYA: The government is getting creative in effort to battle sex crimes against children.
It has begun using social media – the very same medium that has been used to sell sex – to safeguard the young from unwanted sexual advances.
Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said video clips with content to teach preschoolers how to protect themselves have been made available on YouTube.
“This way, we hope to reach 150,000 children aged two to four,” she said during a press conference after launching the Sex Education Awareness Campaign Among Children Through Social Media.
Wan Azizah, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, said early exposure to sex education will help children become more proactive in ways to protect themselves.
“They need to be taught what is ‘safe touch’ and ‘bad touch’. A one-minute video on YouTube will be our direct approach to getting this message across to children,” she said.
She said basic information on how to avoid sex predators and how to identify suspicious behaviour will be part of the content in the video. “They will learn that such behaviours have to be reported (to their teachers or parents) right away,” she added.
Wan Azizah expressed concern that there have been “countless cases” -- both reported and unreported -- of sexual crimes involving children.
Her deputy Hannah Yeoh later told reporters that the ministry has launched five such video clips on YouTube in collaboration with Google and Malaysians Against Pornography (MAP).
“Many parents leave their children unattended with their gadgets. We hope to use social media to carry our message to the target audience,” she added.
She said Google will help to determine where such videos are viewed the most and the content in future video clips will be based on such data and may be designed to meet the specific needs of each region.
“There is plenty of catching up to do on this initiative. We are working with NGOs to eradicate sex crimes against children,” Yeoh said to illustrate the seriousness of the matter.
She said the ministry also recommended that parents should continuously monitor their children’s screen time, and that includes children from as young as two years of age.
In another development, Yeoh said her ministry fully supports a proposal to give fathers at least three days of paternity leave.
The Human Resource Ministry is tabling amendments to the Employment Act at the next parliament session in July to give fathers working in the private sector a minimum of three days of paid paternity leave.
