Child advocate: PP Tunas protects children from digital world crimes

Tanjungpinang - A child advocate in the Riau Islands, Ery Syahrial, stated that the presence of Government Regulation Number 17 of 2025 on the Governance of Electronic Systems in Child Protection (PP Tunas) can protect children from digital world crimes. “This policy is urgently needed to improve the growth and development process of our children in the future,” Ery said in Tanjungpinang on Thursday. PP Tunas will be implemented by the Central Government through the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Komdigi) of Indonesia starting from 28 March 2026. Ery welcomed the enactment of PP Tunas as an effort to protect children from cases of crimes through the digital world that have become increasingly prevalent recently, such as cyberbullying, as well as children becoming perpetrators and victims of various criminal acts, including risks to physical and mental health. He cited a recent report he received from parents of a junior high school girl in Tanjungpinang City who became a victim of sexual harassment via digital means by her male friend, who is also a high school student. That situation, he said, is one of the impacts of the lack of restrictions on gadget use or social media accounts for children, especially among students. According to him, data shows that young children in Indonesia spend around seven hours a day playing with gadgets, dominated by ages four to six years at 53 percent, then ages one to four years at 33 percent, including children under one year at 4.3 percent. “This means there must be government efforts to curb cases involving children resulting from excessive use of gadgets or social media,” he stated. Therefore, Ery supports the implementation of PP Tunas as a collective movement to limit social media use, including gadget use, with supervision from parents or the educational environment. That restriction aims to keep children away from exposure to negative content on social media. In the current digital era, he continued, children still need and have the right to the dissemination and acquisition of information, especially knowledge-based information. “There is also a lot of positive and useful information on the internet for children in terms of learning and exploring future potential,” he said. He also suggested that in the future, children’s access to digital information could be through parents’ or school teachers’ social media accounts, so that the behaviour of young children in the digital space can be monitored, and on one hand, the information obtained is truly filtered and positive. The former Commissioner of the Riau Islands Child Protection Commission (KPPAD) also encouraged local governments to intensively socialise the PP Tunas policy to the community, especially parents and the educational environment. “The implementation of this policy requires cooperation from all parties, from the government, community, to educational units,” Ery concluded.