Better Internet for Kids

This year’s Safer Internet Day in Norway focused on parenting and digital media. The digital part of being a parent can be challenging. Many parents see their children’s use of digital media as a dilemma between learning something new and useful, and taking up a lot of screen time. However, addressing new technology and media habits with bans and high age limits is a bad strategy. So, what can parents do?

In Croatia, the main event for Safer Internet Day (SID) 2021 was a webinar for children titled “Where are you in the digital jungle?”. The moderator of the webinar was the famous YouTuber Malajski Tapir with a number of YouTubers as panellists - PVT Mole, Lavvek, Mashinthebeauty and singer Nika Turković. Children had the opportunity to question them about their approaches to online safety and how are they adapting to the COVID-19 crisis.

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. Due to the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a cluster visit planned for the German and Luxembourgish Safer Internet Centres had to be converted to an online meeting that took place between 3-5 August 2020 and brought together a group of diverse stakeholders and Safer Internet Centre consortium partners.

Safer Internet Day (SID) is an annual event that takes place worldwide on the second Tuesday in February. In the Czech Republic, Safer Internet Day was commemorated for the eighteenth time on Tuesday, 9 February 2021. Read on to find out what celebrations in the country looked like.

Dozens of schools, institutions and organisations in Bulgaria celebrated the 18th Safer Internet Day on Tuesday, 9 February 2021 with various events and initaiatives. The central national event was organised by the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre (SIC) and held online with the active participation of its Youth Panel. Around 80 young people, teachers and professionals took part in the event, which was also streamed live on the centre’s Facebook page. Schools nationwide gathered their pupils and followed the live event on screen.

On Tuesday, 9 February 2021, Safer Internet Day (SID) was celebrated around the world. Initiated by the European Union, Safer Internet Day is organised each year with the aim of raising awareness for a safer internet. As part of the event, numerous activities were organised in Luxembourg.

In the framework of the Online Safer Internet Month of Activity, Austrian schools and youth organisations had the opportunity to celebrate Safer Internet Day (SID) through various self-designed activities throughout the month of February. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, all activities took place online. Even schools which had previously been reluctant to participate in online activities took the opportunity to be involved.

SaferNet Brasil has been working in different ways to strengthen youth engagement since 2012. Considering the intensity of young people’s online presence and their need for self-expression, exploring content and contacts, enabling civic participation, and learning, the mobile connection requires more efforts on self-protection and critical thinking education to allow responsible autonomy in this new digitally connected world.

The German Awareness Centre, klicksafe, proudly looks back on a very successful Safer Internet Day (SID) in the country. Although fewer offline events were possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 200 decentralised events took place across Germany in 2021.

SaferNet Brasil is the first ever NGO in Brazil to establish a multistakeholder approach to protecting human rights in the digital environment. Founded in 2005, the organisation created and has coordinated (since 2005) the National Human Rights Cybertipline and, years later, created and maintains the National Helpline and the Brazilian awareness node for online protection.