Ensuring children’s online safety in Kazakhstan: balancing protection from harm with rights to information access

Abstract
The relevance of scientific research is due to a number of problems that arise in the field of protecting children from the spread of harmful information on the Internet. An increase in the level of crimes against children of a sexual nature, a sharp jump in the level of suicides, the manifestation of various types of addiction, ranging from gambling and ending with drugs, is a consequence of such an influence. The purpose of this work is to study the current legislation of Kazakhstan in this area and to find gaps in its functioning, as well as to propose an effective mechanism for the legal regulation of protecting children from harmful information on the Internet, taking into account international legal experience. The basis of the methodological approach is the dialectical method, which was used to study the legal regulation in the sphere of the use of Internet resources by minors, the analysis method was used to study the legal acts in this area. The results of this study are a comparative analysis of the legal regulation of the protection of children from harmful content on the example of the legal experience of Australia, Britain, Germany in comparison with Kazakhstan. Also, the legislation on the protection of children from harmful information in Kazakhstan was analysed in detail and the main gaps in the existing acts were identified. The study outlines possible ways to develop national legislation through the adoption of new regulations, the purpose of which should be to increase control over the privacy of minors’ data, restrict and block content that explicitly contains scenes of a sexual nature or violence, restrict advertising content, restrict access to information depending on from age. Also, it is going about the creation of special departments to regulate and control the issue of harassment and bullying, namely the Special Commissioner for Cyberbullying. The results obtained in this study can be used to protect children and prevent illegal actions against minors online at the legislative and local levels

DOI: 10.58866/FMYY6192