Better Internet for Kids

The Greek Safer Internet Centre (SIC) has recently published a new scientific article entitled "Understanding the online behaviour and risks of children: results of a large-scale national survey on 10-18-year-olds." The paper includes the results of two large-scale surveys conducted in the last two years in 900 Greek schools among 27,000 students aged 10-18.

The school year 2020/2021 will not start like any other. COVID-19 is still the dominating topic and whether a regular operation of schools under special conditions linked to the pandemic will succeed remains to be seen. One thing is already clear however: this year, teachers will have to deal more closely with the topics of digitisation and internet use. The German awareness centre klicksafe therefore offers an overview of materials and services enabling teachers to start the new school year competently and well informed.

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.