The Worst Children's Library opens: a school library so shocking children are banned

Safe Surfer and Samsung partner with Auckland school to show the scale of harmful online content in real life
AUCKLAND, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND, April 4, 2025 / EINPresswire.com / -- Parents are being invited to witness the confronting reality of the internet through their kid's eyes - inside a real children's library filled with content so shocking that children are banned.
'The Worst Children's Library' will strip the shelves of a real-life New Zealand school library and replace its innocent material with the harmful content that children are actually seeing online, based on multi-source global data.
Showcasing over 1,000 books and book covers catalogued in a 'Dewey Decimal System of Harm', topics range from toxic masculinity and hate speech, to self-harm and animal cruelty. While some titles are too upsetting to share beyond the walls of the Library itself, examples include '100 Ways To Self-Harm', 'Cruel Ways To Kill Animals', and '1,2,3, Count Calories With Me'.
Rob Cope, Our Kids Online co-founder and child cyber safety expert, is hoping that the library will be a powerful tool to help educate parents on the scale of harmful content online that is incredibly damaging to young people, by bringing to life the actual horrors that children have at their fingertips.
'We often rely on our children to be good digital citizens, when in fact they're naturally curious and it's incredibly easy to access harmful content,' Cope says. 'This library is essentially a parent's warning label for the world wide web, showcasing the eye-opening reality of how detrimental the online world is in real life.'
Kieran Gleeson, Senior Leadership, Deputy Principal of Auckland Normal Intermediate School, says that they often have conversations with school parents about the issue of children's online safety - but it was extremely difficult to convey the sheer scale of harm that is so easily accessible.
'We understand that keeping up with a child's internet use—especially on social media—can feel overwhelming for parents. Many worry about what their children are seeing online but may not always know how to monitor or guide them effectively,' Gleeson says.
'The reality is that parents play the key role in managing their child's access to these platforms, often before they reach the recommended age. While schools can work hard to educate students about online safety, we can't oversee their social media use beyond the classroom. That's why we were keen to partner with Safe Surfer and Samsung - to provide parents with practical tools, insights, and support.'
Children's safety online is the top concern for New Zealanders when it comes to the internet, with 71 per cent indicating they are extremely or very concerned about children accessing harmful content online*, and the New Zealand Government banning smartphone use in schools last year.
This concern is not limited to Aotearoa, with the Australia recently passing a Bill to ban children under 16 from using social media and the recent TV show such 'Adolescence' sparking global conversation about the potential impacts of the digital world.
'We developed Safe Surfer to empower parents to take control of their children's online safety, and 'The Worst Children's Library' enables us to very clearly educate parents on the reality of what they need protecting from, and demonstrate how unlimited access can be extremely detrimental to a child - especially while they are so young and don't have the maturity to process and understand the context of the content they're accessing,' Cope said.
'As an issue facing parents globally, this is something that Kiwi kids are not immune to, and there is a need to partner with schools not only locally, but around the world to bring this important initiative to their community,' he says.
'The Worst Children's Library' is an initiative by Safe Surfer and Samsung New Zealand, in partnership with Auckland Normal Intermediate School. Safe Surfer is an innovative platform that uses smart technology and filtering to protect kids from harmful content, and last year partnered with Samsung to launch the Kid-Safe Smartphone - a world-first phone with customisable, in-built safety features and filtering designed to safeguard young users from online harms while keeping them connected.
ENDS. Images and Video available upon request.

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