Insafe Weekly Update

The European Commission has launched a call for evidence and public consultation on the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act.

The Digital Fairness Act will strengthen protection and digital fairness for consumers, while ensuring a level playing field and simplifying rules for businesses in the EU. It will address specific challenges as well as harmful practices that consumers face online, such as deceptive or manipulative interface design, misleading marketing by social media influencers, addictive design of digital products and unfair personalisation practices, especially where consumer vulnerabilities are exploited for commercial purposes. Young people are an important consumer segment with specific consumption patterns and often act as early adopters of new technologies and digital products. The Digital Fairness Act will pay particular attention to the protection of minors online.

The call for evidence and public consultation will be open until Thursday, 9 October 2025 (midnight Brussels time)and are available on the Have Your Say portal. For more information, please refer to the dedicated press release.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation and a call for evidence to support the development of an Action plan against cyberbullying.

The Action Plan will be adopted in early 2026 to build a comprehensive, inclusive, and effective strategy to combat cyberbullying across the EU. It will focus on minors while also considering other elements of cyberbullying including gender and the heightened vulnerability of certain groups of youth up to the age of 29, such as persons with disabilities, LGBTQIA+, migrants and those from religious, racial or ethnic minorities, who are more affected by cyberbullying.    

The public consultations will be open until Monday, 29 September 2025 and are available on the Have your Say portal.

The questionnaire is also available in Word format for screen reader users and in an easy-to-read version. 

On 14 July 2025, the European Commission presented guidelines on the protection of minors under the Digital Services Act (DSA). They will ensure that children and young people can continue to enjoy the opportunities the online world offers, such as learning, creativity and communication, while minimising the risks they face online, including exposure to harmful content and behaviour. 

The guidelines on the protection of minors ensure children enjoy high levels of privacy, safety and security on online platforms. This follows an inclusive and extensive consultation period, including with young people. Among other things, the guidelines provide recommendations to address addictive design, cyberbullying, harmful content, and unwanted contact from strangers. 

Read more about the guidelines on the protection of minors in the dedicated press release.  

On 14 July 2025, the European Commission released the first version of an EU white-label age-verification blueprint, as a basis for a user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification method across Member States. 

The prototype of the age verification app is user-friendly and protects privacy setting a ‘gold standard' in age assurance online. It will, for example, allow users to easily prove they are over 18 when accessing restricted adult content online, while remaining in full control of any other personal information, such as a user's exact age or identity. No one would be able to track, see or reconstruct what content individual users are consulting. The verification app will be tested and further customised in collaboration with Member States, online platforms and end-users. 

Read more about the blueprint for an age verification solution to help protect minors online in the factsheet, and the dedicated press release. 

A reminder that the current call for proposals for Safer Internet Centres will close on Tuesday, 2 September 2025 (17:00:00 CEST). All relevant information can be found on the HaDEA website.

The latest helpline quarterly report is now available from the BIK community (login first). This report covers the period from April – June 2025 and highlights the issues that helplines have been supporting children and young people (and parents/educators) with. Many thanks to everyone who submitted their data. For further information, please contact Karl.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the recent early warning meeting for helplines. You can find a report from the meeting along with a link to the recording in the BIK community (login first).

The next early warning meeting for helplines will take place onWednesday, 17 September 2025, at 11:00 CEST; join the meeting using this link. Please remember it is possible to use the Teams chat to share any information between meetings.

Please contact Karl for any further information.

The next early warning meeting for awareness centres will take place on Monday, 11 August 2025 at 11:00 CEST; use this link to join. Please remember it is possible to use the Teams chat to share any information between meetings.

Notes from the last early warning meeting for awareness centres are available in the BIK community.

Please contact Karl for any further information.

We have developed a good practice guide on working with very young users, as shared in the June 2025 edition of the BIK bulletin and available to download here.

The guide was written by Stéphane Chaudron, and we will have an online meeting on Tuesday, 30 September 2025, at 14:00 CEST, where Stéphane will present the guide and share some key information on how to work effectively with younger users online. Use this link to join the meeting. If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact Karl.

We are sharing information on an external event, co-organised by the 2PS and CYCLOPES projects, taking place in Berlin on 25–26 September 2025.
 
Title: Empowering practice, enhancing prevention: training strategies for professionals working with harmful and distressing content
📍 Venue: Charité, Berlin
🗓️ Dates: 25–26 September 2025 (half-day programme on 26/09)
 
This workshop places the 2PS Project’s training outputs at its centre, exploring tools and frameworks developed to support professionals working with individuals at risk of engaging in harmful or illegal sexual behaviours, including child sexual abuse material. 2PS’s training modules included such themes as: 

1. Understanding and preventing sexual abuse
2. Communicating about child sexual abuse
3. Understanding offender-oriented prevention
4. Threat management
5. Self-care training module, which was also identified as relevant to those addressing other forms of distressing or high-risk content, including professionals exposed to terrorist material, extreme neglect, paraphilias, serious injury and death. Importantly, it will address the importance of psychological safety at the organisational level.

The event also builds on the most recent CYCLOPES Practitioners’ workshop, which addressed the Welfare and well-being of Digital Forensic Investigators, where it was evident that there is a dearth of structure and organised provision that meets the needs of those exposed to harmful content and stressful working environments. Combining these topics, and including other related actions from across the domain, will provide an inspiring and insightful event, which is designed to deliver value for both:

1. Strategic leadership teams responsible for building safer, more resilient systems.
2. Practitioners working in high-impact environments such as law enforcement, digital forensics, psychology, and safeguarding.

Core themes include:

1. Building psychologically safe working environments (e.g. ISO 45003).
2. Ethical and organisational readiness for harm-facing roles.
3. Practitioner resilience and stress-regulation.
4. Training methodologies from 2PS and other key European partners.
5. Peer knowledge exchange and frontline case studies.

Pre-event: 2PS dissemination session
A hybrid pre-event, presenting the key outputs and recommendations of the 2PS Project, will take place on the afternoon of 24 September 2025, open to both in-person and remote attendees. You are welcome to attend this session separately or alongside the main training workshop.
 
Register interest
Due to limited capacity, interested individuals are asked to complete a short form to express interest in registering. Please do not make travel arrangements until your registration is formally confirmed.

• Working together for online safety: My role during the DSA Article 28 event (BIK Youth)
• Youth at the digital frontline - What I learned at the Article 28 event in Brussels (BIK Youth)

Access the full BIK news article archive here.

Please contact the BIK content mailbox with any article submissions or in case of any queries.

Reports from online meetings for awareness centres and helplines are now available in the BIK community, and also:

• 2025 Q2 Helpline observatory report 

Need help with the BIK platform?
Please refer to the BIK platform user guides for support with regular tasks (such as resource and helpline case study uploads).

Alternatively, we are happy to schedule short online support calls at any time. Please use the contact form on the BIK platform or contact the BIK support mailbox initially. We will then schedule a call at a mutually convenient time.

• SIC Albania launches an awareness-raising campaign for children and parents, with simple facts about the internet, how to communicate respectfully with others, and how to protect ourselves when we encounter danger (SIC AL)

Please note the updated URLs for the new BIK platform:

• Better Internet for Kids (BIK):
  better-internet-for-kids. europa.eu; #BIK; #BIKbulletin
• BIK strategy (BIK+):
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/bik/bik-plus-strategy; #BIKplus
• Safer Internet Forum (SIF):
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/sif; #SIF2024; #SIF2025; #SaferInternetForum
• BIK Knowledge hub:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/knowledge-hub; #BIKPolicyMap
• BIK Youth:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/bik-youth; #BIKyouth; #Pledge2Youth
• Safer Internet Day (SID):
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/saferinternetday; #SaferInternetDay; #SID2025; #SID2026
• Media literacy campaign:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/media-smart-online; #MediaSmartOnline
• Child and youth consumer protection campaign:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/adwiseonline; #AdWiseOnline
• Project Facebook profiles:
  Insafe, Safer Internet Day, Insafe network closed Facebook group, INHOPE
• Project X (formerly Twitter) profiles:
  @insafenetwork; @safeinternetday; @BIK_youth; @inhope_pr
• Project LinkedIn profile:
  Better Internet for Kids