Better Internet for Kids

To encourage parents to keep close communication with child about their virtual life, it is important to find time to have conversations about safe and responsible use of the Internet. Often what parents think their child/teen is doing online is different from what the child is actually doing online. Therefore, conversations about their child’s virtual life will help parents better understand what they like to do online, as well as talk over the risks on the Internet so that he/she can protect himself.

Latvian SIC has developed a set of board games and activities in a printable format for children about internet safety inviting teachers, parents and families to play with children during summer camps and school brakes, also on weekends and within informal classroom events. Children can play games also with friends and classmates and learn online safety in a fun and engaging way.

Teachers and parents should print the games and organize competitions or wider activities between children at home or in classroom or during school lessons.

Online friendship or abuse? Innocent questions or attempted grooming?
A self-help test at sos.drossinternets.lv helps to recognize grooming on the internet. Children and young people, as well as parents and educators are invited to fill out the self-help test developed by experts from the Latvian Safer Internet Centre, the State Police and State Inspectorate for the Protection of Children's rights to test how safe the online friendship is, to learn how to recognize grooming cases and where to seek for a help.

Tool available in English at en.sos.drossinternets.lv

Sometimes parents don’t realize that their child have access to online content from his/her device (family device) which is not considered as “family friendly” or “made for kids” and can be inappropriate to his age – violent abusive or sexually explicit. Child can face harmful content accidentally – surfing on the internet, watching videos or checking social media, searching seen or heard keywords by curiosity or receiving from friends or schoolmates direct links to the content that confuses, scares or upsets the child.

Due to increasing number of reports received to Latvian Hotline from parents, teachers and school’s support staff regarding the problem of child nudes circulating on the internet SIC has developed informative resource to raise awareness of parents and teachers about the risks when children unconsciously are producing child pornography and sharing it in closed chat groups, social media and elsewhere on the internet. Nudes of adolescents usually go online because they exchange sexually explicit pictures with their peers without thinking of consequences.

More and more often SIC receives questions from internet users - how to check if Instagram account is trusted? What are the signs of fake account? Therefore, SIC has created advises and most common facts about fake accounts to help people avoid risks of sexual and emotional abuse as well as avoid becoming a victim of scammers who are pretending on social media to be successful businessmen, lonely militarists or usual people with family to involve internet users in their illegal activities.

More and more often SIC receives questions from internet users - how to check if Facebook account is trusted? What are the signs of fake account? Therefore, SIC has created advises and most common facts about fake accounts to help people avoid risks of sexual and emotional abuse as well as avoid becoming a victim of scammers who are pretending on social media to be successful businessmen, lonely militarists or usual people with family to involve internet users in their illegal activities.

Due to increasing number of reports received from minors and their parents about the fact that adolescents are exchanging nudes with peers on social media and such content is circulating on closed chat groups and other places on the internet SIC has developed informative material containing advises to teens how to protect themselves and not to get into such situations, also avoid risks of sexual abuse. Resource includes risks, tips and advises how to act if you have sent your naked photo to somebody or have noticed a photo of a naked minor on the Internet.

Children and adolescents often act spontaneously by posting something which they later regret, therefore Latvian SIC suggests to use mutual test of 7 questions they can ask themselves before posting photo on social media. Test includes the following questions:

1. Is it a good photo?
2. Do my family, friends or other people who are visible on the photo agree on being posted?
3. Could the photo cause problems to other people?
4. Could the photo cause conflicts for me with others?
5. Am I aware that anyone will see this photo?

Board game aims to improve pupil’s skills to analyse information and assess online risks as well as understand consequences of negative behaviour on the internet. Board game consists of 10 comics reflecting different problematic situations online and 20 tasks to look at each of the situation using task cards, and also evaluate themselves filling self-assessment work sheets. Board game is created in a way to make pupils think, identify risks, find solutions, predict how each situation can evolve, also think critically when analysing and sharing online information.