Better Internet for Kids

On the 15th of January, Webwise hosted the Safer Internet Day Ambassador Training Day in Google HQ. Over 100 students from across Ireland gathered together to learn new skills and activities to help them plan and prepare for running their own internet safety awareness raising campaign in their school, clubs or organisations. The aim is to make Safer Internet Day a success in communities and schools across Ireland.

These resources were created by Childnet, a UK Safer Internet Centre partner, during lockdown in April 2020. Since the team couldn't deliver sessions directly to children, they created these easy-to-follow videos that parents and carers can do at home with their children.

What are the interactive video lessons?

Being online is now an integral part of teenage life, and the opportunities the internet offers provides young people with many positive benefits. However, just like in the offline world, life online also comes with its share of ups and downs.

The Full Picture is a short film exploring how young people use social media to connect and share. The film highlights the influences and pressures young people face online and encourages them to see the full picture. Social media helps us share our lives but it does not tell the whole story. The campaign encourages young people to be mindful of what influences them and how they respond to pressures online.

For support and advice visit: webwise.ie/thefullpicture

Plans help to develop a more systematic media education and to make future actions and needs more predictable. It is possible to include media education in current plans or design a totally new one. KAVI has created a guide to start this process. The guide consists of questions that help to figure out what kind of aspects should be considered while planning the development of media literacy.

The teaching material is aimed at pupils from the fifth grade upwards and comprises ten teaching units in which children and young people learn a critical and responsible use of the Internet. The units are based on ten selected videos from ZDFtivi's "App+on" offer (ZDFtivi is the children and youth programme of the public broadcaster ZDF). Among other things, these deal with false beauty ideals on Instagram, the dangers of fake news or the repetition of gender clichés in online profiles.

Media Education is an important part of actions also in libraries. National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI) organised a communication campaign for the general libraries in Finland. Articles shared for the library staff and general public were also collected in one publication mailed to all libraries. This brochure is in Finnish but the main aspects of the campaign can be found in English from the public BIK portal.

Media Literacy is important also in the early childhood education. We can see the influence and the importance of media in every child group: how they play, what they talk, how they are dressed and with the toys they play. There is a core curriculum for early childhood education (ECEC) in Finland that describes media education as one important part of the comprehensive education.

The Netflix checklist provides all the latest information on parental controls whilst showing you:

How to set up children’s accounts
How to add maturity ratings
How to block shows
How to lock profiles
How to turn autoplay on and off
How to access viewing history
The leaflet was created by SWGfL and UK Safer Internet Centre in collaboration with Netflix.

For a graduation project, Lyzza Panday created a recource for us, a documentary about sexting and online sexual assault. The documentary included several interviews with influencers and a guide on what to do after you've become a victim of online sexual assault.