Insafe Weekly Update

In the framework of SIC support to the implementation of the DSA, the European Commission would like to understand which type of survey(s) (type, frequency and, to the extent possible, scope) you envisage under the new grant agreement/in the months ahead. The EC would like to take advantage of possible surveys already carried out at the national level on the use of certain VLOPs and other apps to have a better overview of where minors encounter risks to privacy, safety and security most frequently and what the most popular VLOPs/services for minors are. 

Please respond to Karl by email as soon as possible, and by close of business on Thursday, 22 February 2024 at the latest. 

As mentioned last week, we are exploring options for making print copies of the user-friendly booklet of the Digital Services Act (DSA) provisions for the protection of minors available to Safer Internet Centres (at no or minimal cost) and therefore wish to gauge interest from the network. As such, Safer Internet Centres are invited to contact Annarita with an indication of which languages they would want and in what quantity before COB on Wednesday, 21 February 2024. We will then review all requests to see what is possible and confirm the next steps in a future Weekly Update.

The next Insafe/INHOPE joint training meeting will take place on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 April 2024 in Warsaw, Poland. The meeting will start at 13:00 on Wednesday 17 April and will finish at 17:00 on Thursday 18 April. There will be some optional activities taking place on the morning of Wednesday – a Media Literacy in the Classroom session and also a visit to the Polish helpline. The Insafe Steering Committee meeting will take place on the morning of Friday, 19 April 2024. There will be some optional activities taking place on the morning of Wednesday – a Media Literacy in the Classroom session and also a visit to the Polish helpline.

The meeting will be held at the Airport Hotel Okęcie. A special room rate is available; access this by going to the hotel website, click book a room, then in the upper right corner click enter code. The code to use is EUN. 

Registration is now open for the training meeting and includes information on the draft agenda, as well as the networking dinner and other side events. Please register as soon as possible and by COB on Thursday, 29 February 2024 at the latest. For any questions or further information on any aspect of the training meeting, please contact Karl. 

Thanks to all those who joined the recent online meeting and many thanks to Emil for a fascinating presentation. A report from the meeting along with a link to the presentation and recording are available from the BIK community (login first). For further information, please contact Karl.

The next meeting of the helpline early warning group will take place on Wednesday, 6 March 2024 at 14:00 CET. Use this link to join the meeting; for further information, please contact Karl.

The EU policy roundtable, hosted by the menABLE project, will bring together a diverse group of public and private stakeholders, including policymakers, representatives from civil society, academia, industries, education and young people to discuss priorities in tackling gender-based violence (GBV) online. The primary objective of the roundtable is to present and discuss the research findings of the menABLE Research Report – an empirical study on understanding and responding to gender-based violence online; and the Educational Toolbox concept - a plug-and-play game to prevent and combat gender-based violence online.

The roundtable will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, 20 February 2024, in Brussels and online. For more information about the event, agenda, speakers’ bios and registration, please visit the menABLE website. 

Registration for online participation remains open until the end of today.

The European Digital and Media Literacy Conference is taking place next week, from Tuesday, 27 February 2024 to Friday, 1 March 2024 in Brussels. It puts the many faces of digital and media literacy in the European spotlight during the Belgian EU presidency. The conference is focused on showcasing and exchanging initiatives, tools, projects and practices that can be integrated into your own work or policy. Meet and connect with professionals from around the EU and from all policy levels. Let’s strengthen European cooperation and the future of Digital and Media Literacy! Attending the conference is free, but you need to apply to ensure a good European spread of participants. SIC representatives are warmly invited to participate. 

More information is available from www.medialiteracymatters.eu. In case of questions, please contact Andy Demeulenaere (Coordinator at Mediawijs).

A kind reminder that SICs are requested to proceed with compiling their Safer Internet Day 2024 results by completing the customary SID reporting template (including a blog article). The deadline for submissions is COB on Tuesday, 5 March 2024 (although you are welcome to send blog articles sooner to support post-SID dissemination activities).

Submissions and queries should be directed to saferinternetday@betterinternetforkids.eu. We recognise that many SICs continue to celebrate SID throughout the whole month; if this reporting date poses an issue for you, please let us know as soon as possible.

A new AdWiseOnline campaign launched on Safer Internet Day 2024 as part of a range of new initiatives within the current BIK Phase 5 project. Its key aim is to raise children's and young people's awareness of digital marketing practices and empower them with knowledge about their economic rights. Informed by research, the campaign will focus on a range of (potentially problematic) practices such as influencer and in-game marketing. A research report - Manipulative digital marketing practices targeting children and young people - was published as part of the launch activities, and awareness raising will continue throughout March and April 2024 across various BIK communication channels.

Discover more about the initiative on the BIK portal and in a launch article here.

Please note, this first edition of the campaign is an internal pilot being rolled out in cooperation with a subset of Safer Internet Centres and European Consumer Centres (ECCs) in collaboration with a campaign Task Force. Following evaluation, it will be scaled for full roll-out in 2025, but SICs are already invited to use and disseminate the campaign's resources and messages. 

In case of any questions about the AdWiseOnline campaign, please contact Inna.

A new BIK MOOC (massive open online course) will launch on Monday, 11 March 2024 for a duration of approximately 4 weeks. This course will provide background information and understanding of key initiatives that are shaping the digital experiences of children and young people. It will also explore how teachers and schools can help to protect and promote children's rights in a digital world, how education can empower children and young people with the necessary skills and competences for the Digital Decade, and methods to encourage all youth to actively participate in shaping a better and safer internet.

The course is targeted at primary and secondary school teachers of any subject. Other educational professionals and stakeholders, such as heads of schools, school support staff, and policymakers with an interest in this topic are also welcome to join.

Find out more and enrol on the European Schoolnet Academy.

Safer Internet Centres are kindly asked to reshare the MOOC details through their own channels.

You may recall that, towards the end of last year, we issued a call for members for a new BIK Teacher Voice Panel to give input on ideas, initiatives and resources, so that we can better meet the needs of this stakeholder group. Panel members may also be called on periodically to provide representation at the BIK Advisory Board, the annual Safer Internet Forum (SIF), project focus groups and task forces (on topics such as youth consumer protection and age verification), and high-level consultations on online safety matters.

Last week, we organised a high-level focus group on the Digital Services Act (DSA) in schools on behalf of the EC as part of Safer Internet Day celebrations. The first BIK Teacher Voice panellists participated, giving excellent insights into the current opportunities and challenges in education. As we have more of these opportunities coming up, we are keen to build a wide and diverse teacher base to call upon. As such, Safer Internet Centres are kindly asked to reshare the call through their own channels.

Those interested in applying to join the panel should complete a short online form, including a brief motivation statement and a summary of relevant experience. Please note, to participate in this call, teachers and educators should:

• Be actively teaching in an EU country.
• Be actively teaching children and young people in pre-school, primary or secondary education (until the age of 18 years old).
• Have an awareness of online safety and media literacy issues.
• Be able to express ideas and opinions clearly in English in both written and spoken form.

Further information on the BIK Teacher Voice Panel is available here, where online applications can also be made.

The next edition of the BIK bulletin will be published at the end of March with a focus on the global celebration of Safer Internet Day (SID) 2024, the latest developments with the Digital Services Act (DSA), and two new campaigns: AdWiseOnline - focusing on consumer and youth protection (see also above), and MediaSmartOnline - focusing on media literacy. As always, we also invite Safer Internet Centres (and their partners) to contribute with general articles on news, resources or events. The content deadline is COB on Monday, 11 March 2024 (or sooner if possible) and all contributions or queries should be addressed to content@betterinternetforkids.eu.

As a reminder, we generally suggest that articles should be 300 - 600 words in length (but longer focus pieces are fine too), along with copyright-cleared images/photographs/logos if appropriate. The BIK team reserves the right to edit contributions for house style etc., but we try to keep this to a minimum. See the content contribution guidelines here.

• Insights from Vibeke: BIK Youth Panel Q&A session (SIC DK)
• Safer Internet Day 2024: Artificial Intelligence (AI) risks and opportunities for children and young people (SIC GR)

Remember to submit your public portal blog articles to the BIK content mailbox; they count towards your SIC’s lump sum mechanism (LSM) criteria.

Helpline case studies

• Threat of spreading sexual content (SIC FR)

Awareness community of practice

• WhatsApp - Update including a change to the minimum age - now 13 (see Facebook group post also)
• Student competitions on the occasion of SID 2024 in Greece (SIC GR)
• Diving into the challenges, risks and opportunities from the use of AI (SIC GR)
• Online misogyny and incel culture

Helpline community of practice

• Trusted flaggers - online meeting with helplines and hotlines - 14/2/24
• WhatsApp - Update including a change to the minimum age - now 13 (see Facebook group post also)

We hope that you are enjoying exploring the BIK platform. Please note, a BIK user guide is available to download from the BIK community (login first). In case of questions or issues when using any aspect of the BIK platform, please contact us using the contact link in the top right navigation area or email support@betterinternetforkids.eu.

IMPORTANT – if you have new starters who need to register for the platform, please direct them to www.betterinternetforkids.eu/register, in parallel with sending an email to support@betterinternetforkids.eu so that we can verify them and provide further instructions.

• WhatsApp - changes to terms and conditions and minimum age (in some countries) (see Community of Practice posts above also).

• Better Internet for Kids (BIK) public portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu; #BIK; #BIKbulletin
• New BIK strategy (BIK+) on BIK portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/newbikstrategy; #BIKplus
• Safer Internet Forum (SIF) on BIK portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/sif;#SIF2023; #SIF2024, #SaferInternetForum
• BIK Policy Map on BIK portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/bikmap; #BIKPolicyMap
• Safer Internet Day (SID) minisite:
  www.saferinternetday.org; #SID2024; #SID2025; #SaferInternetDay
• Positive Online Content (POCC) minisite:
  www.positiveonlinecontentforkids.eu; #positivecontent; #PositiveOnlineContent; #POCC
• BIK Youth minisite:
  www.bikyouth.eu; #BIKyouth; #Pledge2Youth
• Child and youth consumer protection campaign (launched on Safer Internet Day 2024):
  #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