Better Internet for Kids

The holidays are now officially over. As a parent or carer, are you worried about how to cope with your children’s everyday school life? The Austrian Safer Internet Centre (SIC) shows you how to make your life easier and learning fun with apps.

The Insafe network of helplines collects data about the types of calls received and this is analysed every three months in order to look at possible trends and emerging issues. Since April 2023, helplines have been using an updated set of categories to log contacts against. The new categories were agreed upon following extensive consultation and discussion with the helpline network. The work was led by a helpline working group who spent considerable time determining the changes that needed to be made.

In order to contribute to the fight against hate speech, the BEE SECURE initiative ran the #NOHATEONLINE campaign to raise awareness during the 2022-2023 school year.

As summer comes to an end, millions of children around the world return to their classrooms, ready to dive back into traditional school subjects like math, history, literature and science. Yet, one piece that is often missing from their curriculum is digital education. Even though digital technology has long been an indispensable aspect of most students’ lives, online safety online safety remains a scarce topic in many schools worldwide.

In the lead-up to this year's Safer Internet Forum (SIF) 2023, the involvement of young people is taking centre stage, ensuring that the event truly reflects voices of today's digitally connected youth. Two key youth-driven groups, the Better Internet for Kids (BIK) Youth Panel and the Safer Internet Forum Youth Advisory Group (SIF YAG), are working hard to shape the event.

Now that it's September and it's time to go #Back2School, we want to highlight the resources and activities provided by the Insafe network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs) for this season.

Whether it’s because of siblings or parents, or whether it’s a result of them starting school, children nowadays first come across the internet and mobile phones at an increasingly earlier age. But when is it an appropriate time for a child to get their first mobile phone?

Once again, with the start of a new school year, the Greek Safer Internet Centre has created and shared new digital educational material for students of all grade levels. The material consists of valuable tools that can be used in the classroom and for independent learning at home.

The largest conference in Poland focusing on online threats and safety will take place on 26-29 September 2023. Experts from all over Europe will gather to discuss a broad spectrum of issues related to the safety of children and young people on the internet.

CyberSquad is an online meeting place for and by young people. About 1,000 young people visit the platform every month for questions and issues around online safety, such as online sexuality and relationships, grooming, non-consensual sexting, sextortion or cyberbullying. No subject is taboo. Young people can share their personal experiences and ask advice from other young people, or help other young people themselves. In case of need, they can also chat directly with a professional counsellor from Child Focus. Two years after the launch of the platform, the organisation wants to make the site more widely known to all young people between 12 and 17.