عارف اسماعیل زاده

Cyberspace, while having capabilities such as wide range and universality, has destructive content that threatens the children’s social and sexual mental health. Therefore, in order to protect children's mental health, it is necessary to perform pathology at the beginning and to adopt a proportional criminal policy to protect the possible victims. The purpose of this research is to study the harms of cyberspace in children and to adopt a suitable criminal policy to protect the children’s right to social and sexual mental health. The importance and necessity of this research is that these injuries cannot be prevented without identifying the harmful ways and if the victims are not protected against the harmful cyberspace, serious risks will treat their mental health.

The research is theoretical and its method is descriptive-analytical.

Due to the lack of effective criminalization, injured children are not given differential criminal protections. According to the results, social interactions of children who use cyberspace too much decrease and they suffer from social isolation, which increases the possibility of depression in them. With the development of new technologies, children are not immune and are exposed to destructive data, which causes abnormal and dangerous sexual behaviors in them. Victimized children need support from the family, the government, government agencies and Non-Governmental Organization to reduce the amount of damage that has been done to the victim.

In spite of various benefits in different fields, virtual space has unfortunately damaged real social relationships in some cases. Children have not been excluded from this development and since they spend more time online, their physical and mental health is naturally exposed to serious risks. Therefore, by providing solutions such as creating a platform for the healthy and controlled productivity of the cyberspace by families and relevant institutions, a lot of harm can be prevented. Educational institutions can support children by creating culture and providing necessary training. In Iran's legal system, as long as the criminal laws do not provide independent criminal regulations for children’s mental, social and sexual health, the right to health will not be supported by an effective and deterrent criminal law and the vulnerability of the victimized children will be doubled.