Better Internet for Kids

The Cyprus Safer Internet Centre (SIC), for the upcoming school year, arranged a series of actions and programmes to disseminate awareness and provide information, according to the safe and responsible use of the internet, promoting the Back2school campaign, which begins at September.

In Greece, the COVID-19 lockdown pushed children to suddenly increase their internet use for communication learning or entertainment purposes, revealing the lack of information and training on key security issues such as misinformation, protection of personal data, cyber-hygiene, and so on.

The Luxembourgish Safer Internet Centre (SIC), BEE SECURE, has created and updated a series of training concepts for the new school year.

The Voluntary Self-Regulation for Multimedia Service Providers (FSM), the German hotline, was recognised by the Federal Office of Justice as the first institution of regulated self-regulation under the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) fulfilling the prerequisites of independence and proper transparent procedure.

On Thursday, 23 July 2020, the Portuguese Digital Leaders attended the Virtual Educa Connect 2020 online conference, the largest international virtual meeting on innovation in education for social transformation. More specifically, the group was involved in a panel discussion on "Digital Citizenship: Risks and Challenges in the ‘New Normal'".

In order to shed light on the operations of SafeLine and its seventeen years of successful operation as a member of INHOPE, the Greek Safer Internet Centre (SIC) has published a research paper about the power of reporting illegal activity online, the dark web and the related legislation.

ChildWebAlert, Malta's national online platform for the reporting of child sexual abuse material, has recently undergone a revamp. The refreshed site offers a more user-friendly experience and has been optimised for mobile devices.

After a resurgence of the Blue Whale challenge online – which has been found to be a hoax – the Belgian awareness centre, Child Focus, has issued some simple tips for children and young people (and parents) on how to handle it should concerns arise.

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.