Better Internet for Kids

Apetail Years is a study of media ownership and use by children between the age of 6 and 12, and young people aged 12-18 in Flanders, conducted by Mediaraven, Mediawijs and imec-MICT-UGent every two years. Belgian awareness centre Child Focus was also involved. The results for Wallonia will be published at the end of 2020. These results provide interesting insight into how young people deal with the news, current events and societal debate.

With information partly gained through INHOPE trainings, and with financial aid from Terre des Hommes and Bread for the World, APLE Cambodia hotline analysts have provided the Anti-Human Trafficking Police of Cambodia and the Department of Anti-Cybercrime with trainings related to the investigation of online crimes related to the sexual exploitation of children.

Scammers have become more active recently, using the names of well-known people in Latvia to target people online and advertise various products on the internet. To help consumers protect themselves in such cases, Latvian Safer Internet Centre (SIC) Drossinternets.lv has developed useful tips.

As part of the Better Internet for Kids (BIK) Quality Assurance Programme (QAP), the Insafe-INHOPE Coordination Teams are jointly conducting a set of ten country visits to national Safer Internet Centres (SICs) to better understand what is happening in the Member States: monitoring emerging issues and challenges, identifying good practices to be shared, and harvesting the results of the Better Internet for Kids (BIK) policy.

In Finland, in early July, the Ministry of Justice issued a draft to the Minister of Justice to suggest amendments to the Criminal Code regarding sexual offences.

Child sexual abuse is a growing threat, both online and offline. To counter this phenomenon, the European Commission (EC) adopted an EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse on Friday, 24 August 2020.

From Monday, 11 to Wednesday, 20 May 2020, COFACE Families Europe marked the International Day of Families 2020 by hosting Digital Citizenship Breakfast Bytes, a series of eight 90-minute online sessions (from 9:30-11:00 CEST) aiming to increase critical thinking and understanding of the digital world. Four Better Internet for Kids (BIK) Youth Ambassadors hosted the last session, "Are youth all natural digital citizens?" on Wednesday, 20 May 2020, discussing what being a digital citizen meant to them.

Global participants in the SIC+ programme recently took part in a webinar to share experiences and good practices relating to awareness raising and youth participation in online safety issues. The Insafe and INHOPE networks launched the SIC+ initiative with the aim of extending and replicating the successful Safer Internet Centre (SIC) model beyond Europe.

ECPAT Sweden's hotline has noticed that self-generated material involves increasingly younger children, some as young as seven years old.

The internet as a medium is often hailed as an invention facilitating creative, personal expression. However, even tools designed to empower can be used for nefarious purposes. Some creators of web content find their niche market thanks to their willingness to do almost anything to become the centre of attention. This is the case with "Patostreaming", a new type of online threat in Poland. According to a 2018 "Nastolatki 3.0" (Teenagers 3.0) study, almost a quarter of Polish students aged 15 and 17 have watched such content.