Insafe Weekly Update

The BIK Advisory Board provides the European Commission with a point of exchange on the ongoing implementation and future development of the BIK platform initiative and supports effective relationships between all relevant stakeholders. SIC representation in the BIK Advisory Board is through two Safer Internet Centre Coordinators, and representation is rotated annually.

The first BIK Advisory Board meeting under the new contract will take place on the morning of Wednesday, 3 December 2025, in Brussels, Belgium (the day before SIF). SIC Coordinators are invited to express their interest in participating by contacting Rima by the close of business this Friday, 3 October 2025.  
 
We take this opportunity to thank the Coordinators of SIC Croatia and SIC Sweden for proudly representing the network on the Board last year. 

The European Commission's call for evidence and public consultation on the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act continues.

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.

Assessment platform submissions are now due for helplines and hotlines reporting on the third quarter of 2025 (July to September inclusive). The deadline for both helpline and hotline submissions will be the close of business on Friday, 10 October 2025. 

Please note that the template includes an additional question asking whether a helpline or hotline is a designated trusted flagger under the DSA. For those who are, two additional questions are provided to capture when the trusted flagger status was awarded and how many notices have been submitted during this quarter.  

To reflect these small changes, an updated Excel template for helplines is now available in the BIK community (login first). A reminder that the Good practice guide on helpline data (March 2023) can also be accessed in the BIK community. For further information, please contact Karl (EUN/helplines).  

Equally, an updated Excel template for hotlines is now available in the BIK community (login first). Please contact Abby (INHOPE/hotlines) for any queries regarding hotline submissions.    

Please remember that these submissions must be made using the assessment platform in the new BIK community. If you encounter issues accessing the platform or need to assign reporting permissions to new or different staff members, please contact the BIK support mailbox. 

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 tomorrow, 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.

There will be a meeting for any SIC that has been designated as a trusted flagger under the DSA. A colleague from the European Commission’s trusted flagger team at DG CNECT will speak, and there will also be an opportunity to share experiences and best practices as well as to ask questions. The meeting will take place on Tuesday, 21 October 2025 at 11:00 CEST; use this link to join the meeting. For further information, please contact Karl.

Dr Cosmin Nada from the University Institute of Lisbon will present some research evidence on the impact of digital tools on well-being, along with Portuguese recommendations from DGE (the Ministry of Education in Portugal). Dr Nada is also part of the ENESET network, which is producing a report for the European Commission focusing on mobile phone bans in schools across Europe, and will share some of the research findings. The meeting will take place on Thursday, 11 December 2025 at 11:00 CET; use this link to join. For further information, please contact Karl. 

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

The next early warning meeting for awareness centres will take place on Wednesday, 12 November 2025 at 11:00 CET; use this link to join. Please remember it is possible to use the Teams chat to share any information between meetings.

Please contact Karl for any further information on awareness early warning meetings.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the last helpline early warning meeting. You can find a report from the meeting and a link to the recording in the BIK community (login first).

The next early warning meeting for helplines will take place on Wednesday, 29 October 2025 at 11:00 CET; 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 on helpline early warning meetings.

A kind reminder to please register for the next Insafe Training meeting, which will take place on the mornings of Tuesday 14, Wednesday 15, and Thursday 16 October 2025. A reminder that this will be an online meeting; there are no restrictions on the number of SIC colleagues who can attend. The agenda is available to view via the registration link.

If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact Karl.

The Insafe Steering Committee meeting, originally scheduled to take place online on the morning of Friday, 17 October 2025, is in the process of being rescheduled. SIC Coordinators should respond to the Doodle in the email issued earlier today. For any questions regarding the Steering Committee, please contact Rima.

Many thanks to all the SICs that have submitted an entry to the competition. The gallery of submitted resource proposals will be available to view via the BIK community (login first) from Wednesday, 1 October 2025, and SICs will be able to vote for their favourite until the close of business on Thursday, 9 October 2025. 

The key dates for this edition of the resource competition follow:

For questions regarding the resource competition, please contact Karl or Annarita.  

EUN is organising, on behalf of the European Commission, an online focus group on the Action plan against cyberbullying on Thursday, 30 October 2025 from 18:00 to 20:00 CET.

Building on the findings from the recent targeted and public consultations, the focus group will seek to gather the views and opinions of young people and other stakeholders on the draft EU common definition of cyberbullying, as well as on a range of preliminary ideas to address it, that may be included in the action plan. The focus group will also provide an opportunity to assess whether these ideas effectively address the concerns of the different groups of participants. 

We are looking for eight parents/caregivers and eight teachers/educators from your national networks who could attend this focus group and actively participate in the discussion (in English). Participants will be selected to ensure a good geographical spread across the network. 

Please nominate parents/caregivers and teachers/educators from your networks by contacting Carolina by the close of business on Friday, 10 October 2025. Your nominations will directly contribute to shaping the EU’s efforts to combat cyberbullying. 

With teaser activities now in progress, the “DSA for YOUth - Protecting minors by design” campaign seeks to raise awareness of the Article 28 guidelines on protecting minors online under the Digital Services Act (DSA), helping children, parents, teachers, and caregivers understand how new guidelines on age verification, privacy, and safety-by-design features make the online world safer and more transparent.

• Timeline: The campaign will run in phases from 15 September to 7 November 2025, starting with a teaser phase, followed by a more active launch aligned with the informal meeting of Ministers for Telecommunication on 9-10 October 2025 (as part of the Danish Presidency of the Council of the European Union), and continuing activities leading up to the Safer Internet Forum on 4 December 2025.
• Campaign outputs: The campaign will deliver a wide range of outputs, including a family-friendly booklet on the Art. 28 guidelines, an online toolkit, youth-created videos, webinars, and SIC insight articles, supported by a multi-platform social media campaign and influencer collaborations. 

In the coming months, SICs will be encouraged to support the campaign in various ways:

1. Providing insights through articles
   SICs are encouraged to showcase their work in enforcing the DSA and helping children, parents, and caregivers address online harms. Through insight articles, social media posts, and features such as ‘day in the life’ stories, the campaign will highlight national best practices, promote trusted flaggers, and provide accessible resources that SICs can share and adapt for their audiences.
   When: Articles will be collected from September through early October; we'll be reaching out directly to SICs later this week.
2. Participating in teacher and/or parent webinars
   SICs are invited to lead or participate in campaign webinars (there will be one for teachers and one for parents), sharing guidance on implementing the DSA in schools and at home, showcasing best practices, and offering practical strategies to enhance children’s online safety.
   When: Webinar dates will be scheduled between 20 and 31 October 2025.
   Deadline: Please express your interest in participating by contacting Inna by the extended deadline of Wednesday, 1 October 2025. We will then work with interested SICS to select a date and begin developing the concepts and content for the webinars. Please note that participating SICs will be fully supported by the BIK comms team at EUN throughout the webinar development and delivery process. The webinars will be conducted in English.
3. Proofreading the family-friendly booklet
   SICs will be asked to review the translated versions of the family-friendly booklet, which summarises the Article 28 guidelines, to ensure clarity, accuracy, and alignment with local terminology and context.
   When: Translated versions will be shared with SICs by 30 October 2025, with feedback required within two weeks.
4. Acting as campaign multipliers
   SICs are encouraged to actively follow the campaign, promote its messages through their channels, and adapt content to their local language and cultural context.
   When: Throughout the full campaign period, 15 September – 7 November 2025. As is typical, the BIK comms team at EUN will provide a variety of resources and materials to support SICs in this process. The teaser phase of the new campaign DSA for YOUth – Protecting minors by design continues. Look out for posts across the project's social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook and X), and please comment, share, and repost, or feel free to use this promo pack to support spreading the campaign messaging. 

We will continue to provide further updates in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned, or in the meantime, feel free to contact Inna with any questions or suggestions on the campaign. 

From group chats to gaming servers, today’s youth connect, learn and grow through online relationships. But alongside connection comes some risks: cyberbullying, grooming, peer pressure, and more.

This new BIK MOOC (massive open online course), Helping kids build and manage healthy online relationships, offers practical guidance for educators, youth workers, and caregivers to navigate these challenges with care and confidence. Starting on Monday, 6 October 2025 and continuing across 5 self-paced weeks, course participants can explore real strategies, discover ready-made tools, and join a European community of professionals facing similar challenges. The MOOC will be delivered in English.

Further information and online registration are available here.

Safer Internet Centres are encouraged to share information on the BIK MOOC with their own networks and contacts. A promo pack is available to support SICs with this (with sample texts, social media posts, and visuals). 

• How the age verification blueprint can help make the internet safer for children (Knowledge hub insight - long read, authored by EC DG CNECT)
• January to June 2025 in review: continued growth in hotline reports (INHOPE)
• Latest helpline trends: Quarter 2, 2025 (BIK)
• New educational material “Back to School” from the Greek Safer Internet Centre (SIC GR)
• Sexual extortion (BIK)
• Almost all teenagers in Slovenia already use AI – most use it for school, some for entertainment (SIC SI)
• Back to school 2025 in Germany: learn how to deal with artificial intelligence and deepfakes (SIC DE)
• Donald Duck teaches children about online safety (SIC SE)
• Youth policy dialogue on cyberbullying with Commissioner Glenn Micallef (BIK)

Access the full BIK news article archive here.

Please contact the BIK content mailbox with any article submissions or if you have any queries.

A reminder that reports from online meetings for awareness centres and helplines are now available in the BIK community.

Safer Internet Centres have been busy uploading resources to the BIK community resource repository: explore or upload your SIC's resources here (alternatively, access the public resource directory here).

Equally, SICs have been uploading new helpline case studies: explore or upload your SIC's case studies here.

Please remember to log in to access these links.

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.

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; #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
• Safer Internet Day (SID):
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/saferinternetday; #SaferInternetDay; #SID2025; #SID2026
• 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