If you have questions or comments regarding any of last week’s activities, please contact info@betterinternetforkids.eu.

Dear Safer Internet Centres

I want to warmly thank you all for your part in making the recent Safer Internet Forum so very successful and extra special.

Sorry that the Brussels public transport stopped me from speaking to many of you at the networking dinner, but I was delighted to see many of you at the meetings on the day before.

And heartfelt thanks for the bouquet of flowers and lovely messages in my card 😊. I was so touched and surprised – and very glad I held it together until I got home on Thursday night!

I hope you all returned safely and smoothly to your homes, and personally found the meetings rewarding and inspiring.

I didn’t manage to take many photos on my phone during the day, but those I did are shared here (zip file link, accessible until 31/12/24).

I told some of you that my daughter had written a script about online extremism, particularly the incel culture. If this is of interest to you, or teachers or youth leaders you are in contact with, to start conversations about how boys and girls can easily get sucked into different online rabbit holes, you can find the script of The Good Guy? here. It does contain a lot of swearing, so we judged it suitable for audiences aged 14 and over when we performed it last month.

Kindest regards and warmest thanks,

June

June Lowery-Kingston
Head of Unit DG CONNECT, G3 Accessibility, Multilingualism, Safer Internet
CNECT Equality Coordinator

Just a reminder that from Q4, helplines will be able to categorise the number of contacts relating to the VLOPs and VLOSEs when submitting their data. We recognise that not all helplines are able to collect this information, but those that are will be able to share this information via the assessment platform in the usual way from the beginning of 2025. For further information, please contact Karl.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the online meeting last week on gamer needs in a toxic (online) gaming landscape, and special thanks to Ouassima from the Dutch helpline for a great presentation. You can find a report from the meeting along with a copy of the slides used and an English translation of the research in the BIK community (login first). If you need any further information, please contact Karl. 

The next online meeting for youth coordinators will take place this Wednesday, 4 December 2024 at 11.00 CET. During this meeting, Paula Martins from the Portuguese SIC will present their Digital Leaders programme.Access the meeting using this link; for further information, please contact Eray.

The next helpline early warning group meeting will take place this Friday, 6December 2024 at 11:00 CET; use this link to join the meeting. For further information, please contact Karl.

Following the success of the helpline early warning meetings, the temporary working group which was set up to look at how best to share public concerns and possible trends and emerging issues, decided that an early warning meeting for awareness centres would be useful. These meetings will take place every six weeks and will providean opportunity to share any current challenges in your country, any new research that has been published, and any new and emerging trends. The first meeting will take place on Tuesday, 7 January 2025 at 14:00 CET; use this link to join the meeting. All colleagues are welcome regardless of whether you have anything to share. For further information, please contact Karl.

A reminder that Safer Internet Day (SID) 2025 will be marked by a global day of focus on Tuesday, 11 February 2025, and events and activities will take place throughout the whole month, across Europe and the globe!

Ally - the new Safer Internet Day mascot
The editable design files for Ally - the new Safer Internet Day mascot - are now available in the new BIK community (log in first) or by emailing the SID helpdesk directly.

[NEW] SID video 
Given the recent change of mascot, and to give Ally a proper introduction to everyone involved in the SID celebrations, we are currently working on an updated version of the SID video including the new mascot and visual identity. We are looking forward to showing you thefinal result, but in the meantime, we can share that it’s going to be similar to the current SID video, as in it will have the same script (and voiceover) in English, which as you know is already available with subtitles in all EU languages. Therefore, once again this year, we offer the possibility to SICs to produce a localised version of the SID video, if you’re able to provide us with a voiceover in your national language. If you’re interested in exploring this option, please contact Annarita. 

For those who have provided a voiceover in recent years, we will automatically take care of integrating this in the new version and will be in touch in due course with further information. In all instances, we hope to make the new video available in early January 2025.

Sharing network SID plans
As mentioned at the recent Insafe Training meeting, we have once again made an online document available for SICs and SIC+ countries to share their SID plans with other members of the network. A reminder that this is an internal document only, to allow network members to see the plans of other SIC/SIC+ organisations, and to make connections where there are synergies. The EC also refer to this regularly to help inform SID planning. Please update the document regularly as your plans progress. 

Updating SID public profile pages
Information on updating public SID profile pages will be shared soon.

[NEW] Reporting on SID 2025 actions
Following the redevelopment of the BIK platform, reporting for Safer Internet Day will now be conducted through the BIK community and aligned with the tools used for assessment platform uploads (including an Excel file upload for those SICs who prefer to work that way).

We will share more information and instructions in the new year, but given that we are now recognising SID as a whole month of activities, we will seek to gather statistics for both the global day of celebration (11/02) and the full campaign period (01/02 - 28/02). To enable us to benefit from the campaign momentum in follow-up activities, completed SID reports should be uploaded by COB on Tuesday, 11 March 2025.

In case of questions or queries
Please feel free to contact the SID helpdesk with any further questions regarding the 2025 campaign.

As the winter holidays approach, VGE (Video Games Europe), Europe’s video games industry's trade association, will soon launch its #SeizeTheControls campaign. This annual campaign aims to help parents and those with parental responsibility practice conversations about online communication, sharing top tips to ensure gameplay is always a happy, positive, rewarding experience for all. The five tips include checking the PEGI age ratings, using parental guidance tools and encouraging parents to play the games with their children to facilitate conversations around play time, game choices, and topics like optional purchases of in-game content.

The campaign will run from 9-20 December 2024 via VGE's social media channels (on X and LinkedIn); SICs are encouraged to reshare posts via their own channels also. Additional campaign assets (including a social media briefing, press release, and images) can be downloaded from the new BIK community (login first).

A reminder, also, that we will soon be picking up on some of these issues in the full roll-out of the BIK AdWiseOnline campaign, launching in January 2025, with a specific focus on the commercial aspects of online gaming. More information will follow soon.

The next edition of the BIK bulletin will be published in mid-December with a focus on the outcomes of Safer Internet Forum (SIF) 2024. We’ll also be looking ahead to the new AdWiseOnline campaign (launching in January), Safer Internet Day (SID) 2025 and, as is typical for this time of year, we hope to include a few festive tips too. 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 this Wednesday, 4 December 2024. 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.

Recently published articles include:

• Ultra-violence on your smartphones: How to protect your children? (SIC FR)

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

[NEW] Resource and helpline case study uploads

We have now officially 'opened' the resource and helpline case study upload forms on the new BIK platform.

Log in in the usual way and navigate to the respective landing pages in the BIK community to access the instructions and start uploading your contributions:

• Resource repository (download instructions on uploading resources)
• Helpline case repository (download instructions for uploading helpline case studies)

Please bear in mind that any submissions go through a moderation workflow before they appear in the respective repositories, but we'll aim to approve them as soon as we can.

[COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT] Subscribe to the BIK community of practice discussions

We hope you have had time to start exploring the community of practice discussions organised under the four strands of Awareness, Helpline, Hotlines and Youth (when logged in). We also invite you to start contributing to the discussions to help build a vibrant and knowledgeable community within the Insafe and INHOPE networks.

Did you know that you can receive alerts directly to your inbox when a new comment is posted? Under each strand, go to My subscriptions. You can set an alert for each sub-category of discussion: 

Need some support?

As always, if you have questions about any aspect of the new BIK platform, please use the contact form on the BIK platform or contact us via the BIK support mailbox.

Please note the updated URLs for the new BIK platform:

• Better Internet for Kids (BIK) on the new public platform:
  better-internet-for-kids. europa.eu; #BIK; #BIKbulletin
• BIK strategy (BIK+) on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/bik/bik-plus-strategy; #BIKplus
• Safer Internet Forum (SIF) on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/sif; #SIF2024, #SaferInternetForum
• BIK Knowledge hub on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/knowledge-hub; #BIKPolicyMap
• BIK Youth on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/bik-youth; #BIKyouth; #Pledge2Youth
• Safer Internet Day (SID) on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/saferinternetday; #SID2025; #SaferInternetDay
• Media literacy campaign on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/media-smart-online; #MediaSmartOnline
• Child and youth consumer protection campaign on the new BIK platform:
  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