An Intelligent Gamification Tool to Boost Young Kids Cybersecurity Knowledge on FB Messenger

Abstract

With the blind connectivity of many individuals across the Internet today, a lot of cyber-crimes and cyber-assaults occur in diverse forms. Cybersecurity knowledge among kids on Facebook Messenger within the ages of 6-12 years is a major concern due to their age group and perhaps their inability to manage security/privacy issues of their personal information and attitudes to issues while surfing the Facebook Messenger App. In view of this, this research first analysed recent issues regarding cybersecurity of young children, focusing more on Facebook Kids Messenger. All the data analysed were gotten from secondary and tertiary sources. The qualitative research approach was employed as this is purely an innovative ideation based on literature and recent security publications. Further, the innovativeness/ ingenuity of this article is the proposal of a Gamification Awareness (GA) prototype designed to ensure the boost of cybersecurity knowledge for kids on FB Messenger, which could be applicable to other online social media platforms as well. A major novelty of this paper is that, it seems to be the first research in the domain to propose an innovative knowledge approach through the use of Intelligent Gamification to boost young kid’s cybersecurity consciousness on FB Messenger. Finally, it is important to note that this paper presents the ideation stage of the development and hopes to present in a future report the development and deployment of the actual gamification technique. This could ensure that kids are fully and duly aware of necessary cybersecurity knowledge in an interactive way, while surfing the Internet, as well as boost their positive healthy development online.