This guide on the role of parents in the digital era was developed by the Moroccan National Observatory on Children’s Rights (ONDE), the UNESCO Office in Rabat and Microsoft Morocco. It provides advice on child cyber-protection to parents, teachers and people working with children.

The recent wide spread of the Internet in Morocco demonstrates a real shift of the country towards progress and democracy. Internet facilitates access to information, reduces the gap between towns and villages, shortens distances and promotes the culture of openness and sharing. Children are an important element of this digital revolution. They actively participate in the evolution of cyber-environment since their very young age and demonstrate astonishing capacities to understand and to use new digital tools, sometimes surpassing the skills of their parents.

Today ICT can offer children various opportunities to develop their creativity, to access and share information. But the use of Internet also involves real risks for the safety of children: they can become victims of paedophilia or other forms of violence. Parents and teachers should, therefore, learn how to manage these risks.

According to the authors of this guide, the new cyber-environment does not fundamentally change the role of parents, whose role is to ensure good physical and mental health of their children: to accompany them in their discoveries; to answer their questions; to protect them against all forms of aggression; to help them distinguish fiction form reality and lie from truth; to set limits and sanction transgressions, etc.