MALAYSIAN children are spending increasingly long hours online, with more than half now glued to the internet for between one and four hours each day, and six in ten owning their own digital devices, Parliament was told on Tuesday.
Delivering the Special Select Committee on Women, Children and Community Development’s findings, its chair, Yeo Bee Yin, said the committee’s engagement sessions with multiple ministries and enforcement bodies revealed deepening concerns over children’s digital habits and the psychological and behavioural risks arising from them.
“The internet is a double-edged sword, offering great benefits but also causing harm,” Yeo said during a dedicated parliamentary session on digital safety and the mental health of Malaysian children.
She noted that excessive and unsupervised screen time has been linked to Internet gaming disorder (IGD), social anxiety disorder, mental health deterioration, addictive tendencies and sexual misconduct.
These concerns, she said, were reinforced by expert briefings from the Home Ministry, Health Ministry, Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, Social Welfare Department, the police, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, the Office of the Commissioner for Children and Suhakam between 30 October and 13 November.
Citing a study involving 5,290 adolescents across seven states, Yeo revealed that 3.5 per cent of respondents met clinical criteria for IGD—equivalent to about 315,000 Malaysian children.
IGD, she said, is characterised by “persistent and repetitive gaming resulting in significant deterioration”, including social withdrawal and loss of interest in other activities.
“In terms of mental health impact, among adolescents with IGD, 48.1 per cent experience severe anxiety, 37.4 per cent severe depression, and 18.2 per cent severe stress,” she added, emphasising the scale of the problem.
Yeo also drew attention to the troubling link between digital content, addiction and sexual offences involving minors.
Nearly half of Malaysia’s sexual crime cases involve children, she said, with 68.1 per cent categorised as consensual encounters between individuals under 16.
“In such cases, only the male is prosecuted under statutory rape offences according to Sections 375 and 376 of the Penal Code, as statutory rape is defined as an offence committed by a man engaging in sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 (with or without her consent),” she explained.
She added that close to 90 per cent of adolescents engaged in repeated sexual activity reported being influenced by early exposure to pornography, social media and digital sexual material.
Approximately 30 per cent of child sexual offence cases involving those placed in Sekolah Tunas Bakti and Asrama Akhlak, she noted, stemmed from inadequate supervision of gadget use.
Yeo said the findings point to a critical need for a coordinated national strategy to safeguard children’s digital well-being, address systemic gaps and strengthen mental health support as the country navigates the rapid digitalisation of childhood. - December 2, 2025
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