Through the instructions for a LEGO brand product, an eight-year-old boy landed on a page with adult content when all he was looking for was a skin (a suit) for a Minecraft character.
The story actually goes beyond that and is, without a doubt, a case that can put the brand in check, since we are talking about one of the most sensitive sectors or niches: children.
We live in an era in which access to information is immediate; All you have to do is grab a cell phone to go online and browse an infinity of web pages without knowing for sure where our curiosity may lead us.
Today, just as technology is at our fingertips, it is also available to anyone; Whether it is a 30-year-old woman, a 45-year-old man and even an eight-year-old child, we can say that we can all access the network under the same terms and conditions.
Given this, over the years, the authorities have made efforts so that, in this case, minors (who, in turn, may be the most affected) have more restricted access and that they are the parents who regulate what their children can see on the internet.
During the last months, we have witnessed specific cases where minors are affected by what they find surfing the net.
An example of the latter is the case of how social networks (such as Instagram and TikTok) are extremely harmful to children and adolescents, who, through the content on these platforms, are exposed to harassment, cyberviolence, depression, but Also, in extreme cases, what they see on these social networks can be detrimental even to their own health.
To mention something, the challenges of TikTok are, without a doubt, some of the content that generates the most concern, since children under 12 have suffered serious consequences for trying to meet the challenges of the social network.
A few days ago, we learned about the case of how, through Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa, a 10-year-old girl in the United States met one of those deadly challenges that have been reported on TikTok; However, the prompt attention of the child’s mother could save her and, in addition, it was an event that went viral on social networks.
Today, however, what is reported to Merca 2.0 is the case of an eight-year-old boy who, following the instructions of an instruction manual, ended up on a pornographic page, a fact that has even generated consequences at his school, being, on the one hand, suspended from his school and, furthermore, pointed out by other parents.
The mother of the eight-year-old boy was the one who approached Merca 2.0 to tell us about the child’s experience with one of his games:
“My eight-year-old son was suspended from elementary school for having entered a“ code for a minecraft skin ”, affecting two other classmates of the same age.
The triple X code is included in the LEGO Minecraft 7+ Kids’ Instructions; graphically it looks like this: 1 XXX- XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX + 2 LAPTOP + 3 SkinHe mentioned.
“My son followed the graphic instructions in the instructions, which he used to assemble his LEGO autonomously without adult supervision, (as suggested by LEGO: let the children do it independently. All the instructions for assembling legos are graphic , no instructions are written as such), so he followed the instructions to put XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX on his iPad, in safari, thinking that he was going to download a Minecraft skin.
Thanks to parental permissions, being a minor account, he was not allowed access, so it was with another partner who, unfortunately, did not have parental permissions and images, videos and pornography sites appeared instead of the skin of Minecraft that they hoped to find. In their innocence, they thought LEGO had played a bad joke on them.
As a consequence, apart from the in-school suspension, the mothers of the other two classmates do not let them hang out with him; the mothers demand that I pay psychological support to their children for the affectation they had, since when they saw those images they could not sleep and, even, one of them also suffered a stomach pain “, he concluded.
Of course, the mother of the affected minor mentioned having contacted the brand, which responded by saying that “The“ XXX ”in the image were intended to be a substitute for the letters of the real code,” a response that, she affirms, does not It has made her happy, since it can happen to any child.
It should be noted that, since Merca 2.0, we have requested LEGO’s position, but we do not have an answer yet.
Undoubtedly, we know that the internet is a great tool, but, like everything else, it has its negative side and, in that sense, it is necessary to create a safe environment for those users who, in one way or another, are more sensitive.
Currently, according to data from Statista, there is at least one adult content site among the 10 most visited web pages in the world, a page to which any user has access.
That is why, more and more, authorities and parents are being called to be more aware of what their underage children are seeing on the internet, since the experience can be very detrimental to their own health, both physical and mental.
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