child safety

child safety, area concerned with limiting children’s exposure to hazards and reducing children’s risk of harm. Children are particularly vulnerable to accidents, and their safety requires different approaches from those for adults. In the early 21st century, approximately one million children worldwide died each year from accidental injuries, with about 95 percent of those injury-related deaths taking place in low- and middle-income countries. In the United States and most other industrialized countries, unintentional injury was the number one cause of death among children.

No one device or solution can prevent all types of accidental childhood injuries. Instead, child safety requires a multifaceted approach, which includes educating adults and children about risks, designing safe environments, conducting research, and advocating for effective laws. Education is one of the main pathways to improving child safety and requires the involvement of parents, caregivers, children, health care practitioners, policy makers, and other target groups in order to increase knowledge and change attitudes and behaviour. Examples of areas in which education about risks is crucial include the use of seatbelts in automobiles and helmets while bicycling and for other activities, the importance of not leaving young children unattended, and keeping plastic bags, choking hazards, and toxic materials out of the reach of children.

The massive numbers of traffic accidents that occurred during the 20th century inspired efforts to build safer cars as well as safer child restraints (e.g., car seats) to ensure that children travel safely. The correct use of child safety seats in passenger cars can reduce the risk of death from car accidents by as much as 71 percent for children under one year of age. Likewise, the use of helmets can significantly reduce the risk of brain injury from bicycling accidents.

Certain common household objects can be extremely dangerous to children. For example, small objects and plastic wrappings or bags left with children are choking hazards, and toxic products, such as cleansers, can result in poisoning. Many injuries and deaths are also caused by falls, both outside and inside the house, and often these incidents can be prevented by using simple child safety devices such as safety gates for stairways.

Changing children’s surroundings and influencing design are key issues when dealing with child safety. Child safety advocates promote the development and manufacture of safer products. This can be achieved by the issuance and enforcement of regulations as well as through the development of voluntary standards and guidelines enabling injury prevention. Child safety is just as important in the context of the Internet as in the physical world. The easy access to online communities and cases of children’s being bullied or pursued online by pedophiles and child pornographers have sparked much discussion about how to best monitor the way children interact online.