Better Internet for Kids

On Tuesday, 23 June 2020, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) launched its new 2020 Guidelines on Child Online Protection (COP), a set of recommendations for children, parents, educators, industry and policy makers on how to contribute to the development of a safe and empowering online environment for children and young people.

The CO:RE – Children Online: Research and Evidence (CO:RE) project is a three-year long project funded by the European Commission in the framework of Horizon 2020, aiming to establish a pan-European knowledge platform on digital technologies in the lives of children and young people.

Teenagers and adults are constantly bombarded with images depicting "perfect" bodies, faces, products and relationships, making them feel inadequate and urging them to have similar lifestyles.

16-year-old Bulgarian youth panellist Milena Radoytseva was recently recognised as one of 12 kid activists who are changing their communities and the world for the better by The Washington Post. As a member of the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre's Youth panel, Milena is making the internet safer for Bulgarian children and their families.

CYTA, an organisation part of the Cypriot Safer Internet Centre (SIC) has produced a theatre play on cyberbullying for high school students, called #George's Room. It has been performed in 350 schools in the country, for two consecutive academic years (2018/19 and 2019/20).

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. Exchange of good practices and identifying further opportunities for collaboration was also the focus of a cluster meeting organised between the Safer Internet Centres in Estonia and Finland on 9-10 December 2019, hosted at the Sofia Future Farm in Helsinki.

Today, the Insafe network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs) begins a two-day training meeting online. This event is an opportunity for members of the network to share experience and good practice and continue to enhance the collaborative learning community that has developed within Insafe.

The time children and young people spend online has increased significantly, giving them access to unprecedented opportunities but also exposing them to new risks. To address this new reality, the European Commission (EC) is funding four Horizon 2020 projects: CO:RE, DigiGen, DIGYMATEX, and ySKILLS, all of which have synergies with Better Internet for Kids (BIK) actions.

In February 2020, Better Internet for Kids (BIK) Youth Ambassador Kathrin Morasch participated in Safer Internet Day (SID) celebrations at the European Commission (EC) to introduce the Youth Pledge for a Better Internet, along with five fellow youth panellists. Below, she looks back on her experience.

The Insafe and INHOPE networks have launched a new capacity-building initiative, the SIC+ programme, to share experiences and expertise acquired within the development of the European Safer Internet Centre model with colleagues across the globe.