View source for Children and social media – opportunities and risks, rules and responsibilities – WS 05 2010

30 April 2010 | 10:15-11:30 <br />
[[Programme overview 2010|'''Programme overview 2010''']]<br /><br />

== People == 
'''Key Participants'''
* Roberto Aparici, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
* María José Cantarino, Telefonica, Teachtoday.eu
* Jutta Croll, Digital Opportunities Foundation, Managing Director
* Javier Garcia, Madrid Office of the Ombudsman for Children
* Silva Järvinen, The Finnish Children’s Parliament
* Anders Johanson, Swedish Regulator PTS
* Nadine Karbach, European Youth Forum
* Narine Khatchatryan, Media Education Center
* Georgios Kipouros, European Youth Forum
* Yuliya Morenets, TaC – Together against Cybercrime
* Rauna Nerelli, The Finnish Children’s Parliament
* Sara Reid, The Finnish Children’s Parliament
* Graham Ritchie, CEOP – Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre
* Ana Luiza Rotta, eNASCO
* Yolanda Rueda, Fundación Cibervoluntarios
* Matthias Traimer, Information Society, Austrian Federal Chancellery

'''Moderator'''
* Matthias Traimer, Information Society, Austrian Federal Chancellery 

'''Rapporteur'''
* Franziska Klopfer, Council of Europe

'''Remote participation moderator'''
* Franziska Klopfer, Council of Europe

== Key messages ==
ICTs provide children with an unprecedented possibility of having their voice heard and in participating in the public discourse of society. Protectionist educational approaches to the use of Internet often produce negative results and do not allow young people to apply the principles of autonomy and critical reflection to negative messages nor do they let them develop self-defence communication against politically incorrect messages. Media literacy should be considered as one of the priority issues of Internet governance. New pedagogies of communication, minimum competencies in order to be Internet literate, and the implementation of media literacy programmes are important ways to move forward.

== Messages (extended)== 
'''Opportunities and risks'''

''Opportunities''

* ICTs provide children with an unprecedented possibility of having their voice heard and in participating in the public discourse of society.
* Technologically savvy children and young people can use the Internet to advance positive changes in society.

''Risks''

* Children are not always aware of all the positive opportunities of the Internet or of the threats to their rights and security online.
* Children are excluded from discussions on Internet governance.
* Digital generation gap: parents and teachers are often not fully informed about technological developments in order to teach children about using the Internet.
* Many parents are not always available to teach their children about using the Internet.
* Young people who are most at risk from online harm are those who are most at risk from offline harm.
* Protectionist educational approaches to the use of Internet often produce negative results. They do not allow young people to apply the principles of autonomy and critical reflection to negative messages nor do they let them develop self-defence communication against politically incorrect messages.

'''Rules (what needs to be taught and how?)'''

''What?''

* Media literacy should be considered as one of the priority issues of Internet Governance.
* Measures to increase child participation through the use of ICTs should be increased – this includes child participation in discussions on Internet governance.
* New pedagogies of communication should help children to develop social and technological skills that allow them in their online as well as offline lives.
* Digital literacy programmes should also be provided for parents and teachers.

''How?''

* Media literacy means to develop the skills needed to read and produce thoughtful, creative and critical “online prosumers” (producers and consumers) in different media and languages.
* Media literacy needs to be improved, for example through educommunication, i.e. teaching children a thoughtful and critical use of the Internet making them not passive consumers but also active producers of media content.
* Minimum competencies to be Internet literate includes knowing and understanding the convergence of media and languages, to analyse levels and patterns of interactivity and navigation, understanding and applying the criteria of usability and accessibility in a context of collaborative and participative learning.

'''Responsibilities (who needs to act?)'''

* The implementation of media literacy programmes has been delayed for too long: much more effort needs to be made now to make children truly media literate.
* Parents and teachers must not be left alone with this task - the industry, as well as the education system and governments and NGOs, have to contribute.
* The key responsibility may lie with the industry and law enforcement bodies.

== Transcript ==
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''This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.''



>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Okay. So good morning, everybody. Welcome to this workshop. I know it is a little bit – reminds me of the work that I also do at university classes. And normally I have plans to have a very interactive panel, a panel, I say an interactive crowd as you are sitting here. So I hope that you are not hesitate while you are sitting here very school-like, but nonetheless the topic of our workshop is children, young people, online opportunities, risks, rules, responsibilities. I guess nothing new for you. One of these central ongoing issues of the IGF and the agenda of today’s merging on and offline environment of children and I do not have to stress and say that, of course, young people are the fastest growing user group. And it seems that the Internet is already a normal tool today for children at the age of 10. And it is increasingly becoming an attractive tool for many between 6 and 10 years old. And there are also studies that say that even younger children are getting on line already but this has been barely researched. We will have also remote participation if our two colleagues succeed in getting remote access. And if there are any interesting questions coming from all over the world to our workshop, Franziska, she will give us the opportunity to hopefully answer them. 

We have also special guests, I am always happy when we really have real young people here among us. Our guests from the Finnish children’s parliament and maybe some of you have heard them speaking yesterday and we want to make use of their presence, that maybe we can learn from you what our children, young people, I say teenagers of your age are really doing on the Internet, because as recently Tonya Baranges, she puts herself Internet safety from the UK government, that there is a missing – mismatch from parents’ opinions between what children are doing on the Internet and what children are really doing. So let’s start like this with a quotation, “Ask your child only how it was in school today but also how it was on the net today,” says Anders from the Swedish regulator. Have a lot of experience with especially the PP programme dealing with online protection. What do you think, we should ask children what did you do on the net today and what lessons have you learned? 

>> Anders: When my daughter Sophia some years ago was still a teenager we started to ask her every day at the middle – at the dinner table how was it – how is it on the net today besides how was the football match or was it in school and it was quite interesting with those dialogues. And we also done in the public/private partnership programmes we started some years ago in Sweden we made last year an inquiry. We asked a thousand parents do you know what your child is doing on the Internet. And the big majority of them said yes, I know what my child is doing on the Internet. And we asked the same question to a thousand young people, and the big majority answered my parents don’t know what I am doing on the Internet. And we think that is very interesting. And maybe it depends on that – maybe it is because some parents are not – don’t think they are skilled enough in Internet use and the uses of social media. But we think in this private/public partnership online protection measures you are taking in our country that that’s not a good reason. We understand, of course, I am not skilled enough. I could count – can’t keep up with the technology, with the usage of social media, for instance. But I can, you can ask the question and start the dialogues and ask also show me please what you are doing. And we have many witnesses now that that works and most young people are interested and likes the parents and other adults interfere. 

And then we can get in to deeper questions like have you thought about what might happen with information, with party pictures, that you put them up on Facebook, what you think will happen with the pictures in the future. So this is one of the main approaches we have with 20 organizations that are working together now, and maybe I can come back later to what other measures are taken in this partnership programme. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Yesterday you told us I think when you registered at Facebook, right, didn’t you get the help from your mom or how much – oh, it was you. Sorry, sorry. How much does your mom know what you are doing on line? Do you want her to know? Do you tell her? Does she ask? How does it work? 

>> Well, she knows quite well what’s happening because she is an IT specialist herself. She knows what’s going on and what’s the latest stuff. We talk quite much about Internet at home. And I think she knows quite well what I am doing and where – 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: So if you want her to know, you don’t have anything to hide? 

>> No, I don’t have anything to hide. I can ask all kinds of questions about the Internet. And I can – 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Also your mom, you talk to her, your dad? 

>> Yes, they know quite a lot. But, for example, when I am talking in Messenger I don’t want them to see – they can see who I am talking to but I don’t want them to know what I am talking to my BFF. They know. Not all of that. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: You should have some secrets. 

>> Well, I think that it is – 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Kind of the environment. 

>> I think it is my own private, because if you think about it I don’t read her phone messages or I think it is quite the same. Because it is my own conversations. She can see what I am doing on Facebook and she is my friend and she can see everything that I do. But I think that Messenger is like messages on the phone, you don’t show them to everyone. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: We might come back to this if there are any differences, the same like phoning or something like that. You also are dealing a lot with this question to understand children’s behavior, right? Manager, director of the Digital Opportunities Foundation in Germany, Jutta, what’s your opinion? How much do you think really the so-called educators, parents, teachers and so on know, understand what’s going on and what would you say, is it necessary to provide them with further skills or maybe also not a problem of too much intervention in the privacy? 

>> JUTTA CROLL: I think that’s exactly the problem, how much can parents intervene in the privacy of children on the one hand and how much can they take their responsibility. First of all, I would like to agree to what Anders has said but I think we can put it a little bit further because the quote makes a differentiation between living the life of school and the life of the web the children have, and that’s a differentiation that only adults are doing. And the children, they do not differentiate. So, for example, if you ask a child in the evening what have you done this afternoon, maybe they would say I have met a lot of friends, even if they have been stuck in their room and they went not outside. And that’s a point I think many adults and especially those that are responsible for the education of children, they do not understand that children don’t differentiate between their life in the web and their life in reality. But it is necessary to understand that and also parents, teachers, educators in any area, if they do not understand what children are really doing there then they can’t do their job in education I think. So first of all, I think it is necessary to think about maybe more awareness raising for those adults who are responsible and also we have to take in consideration that not all families meet at the dinner table like you have said. We have many, many families where parents and children do not meet regularly. So – and we have to think about how we can address these adults to give them the knowledge they need to guide their children through the virtual world. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Any comments on that? Anybody who – 

>> Yes. I would also like to say that – 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Introduce yourself. 

>> I am Annalise. I am here representing European Alliance for Health Protection. I want to add on to what Jutta was saying. One of the things that we are always saying that parents should teach their children about the Internet the same way that they teach the children how to cross the street. But that is really unfair for parents because everybody knows how to cross the street when you are an adult and not all parents know about the Internet. And many families, many parents, many adults are scared of this new technology. It is not new anymore but this technology that they don’t understand or recognize. Another point I would like to make is that not all parents are good parents. Not everybody is like her mother that is interested in what she is doing that takes her time to be with her and to understand what she is doing. Many children have parents that are pre-occupied with work, with other issues that really don’t have time to invest in their education, and usually these are the kids that are more at risk. What are we saying, that these kids have no right to protection; they have no right to understand and know about the risks because that knowledge they are not going to get from their families. So that’s why we at eNACSO and all the geos that work at this alliance ask for more to get this message across to all children. To raise digital citizens to teach, to have this access to all of the children. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Yes. Thank you. We will come back also to this comment at a later point. I think this is one of the key issues we have also to talk about. But when we talk about parents, maybe we should really also look AT what is the industry doing not only to teach kids or parents or whoever but also to provide maybe, I don’t know, the devices. We have somebody, our host from Telefonica, Maria Jose Catanano. The industry has an important role like many other stakeholders. What’s the actual role of either your company or initiatives that industry plays in this context be it protection, be it education? 

>> Maria: I want to take advantage of being in this space. I am going to continue in Spanish. As Anders said promoting new use of technology on the Internet, not only geos have an active role to play or teachers or governments. There is a lot to do. Is it working? Can you hear the translation? I mean this has to be done in collaboration. There is a lot of joint work to do. In the industry we have found that are part of the problem. So we are a very important stakeholder in order to provide a solution to this issue. Companies are very big such as in the case of Telefonica but we cannot do things on our own. Unilaterally on the part of the industry we are developing certain issues and initiatives in collaboration with end users. We have professionals. We collaborate a lot with them for educational issues, but the situation is changing because we are not only collaborating with end geos and the industry is working with us in partnership and we have an important alliance in order to have a higher impact. 

Right now we are working with competitors such as with Vodaphone, social networks, MySpace, Facebook. We are all gathered in order to carry out educational activities. We have today a web portal carried out in collaboration with European Schoolnet. There are brochures on this initiative here around and teach today is a Web page devoted to teachers. The digital gap between adults and minors has a very big impact in teachers because teachers have to teach children how to use technology properly and how to protect themselves because teachers at the school are facing many problems due to the use that children make regarding Facebook and social networks, et cetera. So we are teaching them how to protect their privacy. How to face cyber bullying or harassment at school. How to learn – how to use Messenger, Facebook. How to protect themselves within social networks. We could do more, of course. But this is a good example of educational initiatives that have been implemented on the part of the industry and that’s all. Thank you very much. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Yeah. Thank you. You were saying industry can do a lot but cannot do it all on its own. Yeah. There must be some kind of more collaboration and somebody also says that industry and especially law enforcement, sort of authorities that they must recognize their connective responsibility to uphold the rights of children. This is said by Graham Ritchie from the Child Exploitation and Online Foundation in London. I have the feeling you want to do some criticisms, express some criticisms, maybe. Am I right? That you maybe think that industry and authorities haven’t done enough so far in this kind of working together for a safe online environment? 

>> GRAHAM RITCHIE: Well, I would like to echo the sentiments of my colleagues at Telefonica and Cisco. I represent CEOP which is the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in the UK. In our experience online child protection strategies are much more effective when they are delivered in partnership and a partnership between law enforcement, government, end geos and industry as well. Now it occurs to me that a lot of online platforms that young people enjoy are gradually converging in social networking sites and in the UK the social networks sites are increasing. It demonstrated that 40 percent of children ages 8 to 11 have a page on the Facebook. And we have witnessed a spirally trend in cases of sexual abuse where the perpetrator has made contact with the victim through social networking sites. CEOP has developed a site – and we believe that all children have a right to protection in the online environment, and it is my opinion that law enforcement and industry must work together to uphold this right. 

Our approach was developed following a conference termed International Youth Advisory Congress where over a hundred children from 19 countries throughout the world came together for a two-day summit in London and this summit culminated in the production of the global online charter written by children which outlined their expectations, their needs and their desires for what measures law enforcement and industry can take to make the online environment safe for them. Now they stated that every child is entitled to education about cyber safety. The governments need to put pressure on the industry to unify to report abuse on sites and all intelligence regarding reports must be passed to law enforcement agencies. These are clear messages for everybody involved in this field. The CEOP act – firstly we work on education and CEOP administers an education programme for children ages 5 to 17 in the UK which is called Thank You Know and to date that education programme has been delivered to 5.5 million children in the UK. 

Secondly, CEOP works with willing industry partners to embed what we call the click CEOP button in online environments frequented by young children and people. This is a passive link that sits in the online environment, and if a child feels threatened or uncomfortable about an environment they click on the link. By clicking this link they can access all kinds of advice from experts on bullying, viruses, hacking and more serious things such as sexual abuse and illegal content. So this is a very empowering experience. It gives children control, so when they are on line if they feel in any way uncomfortable they can take control of a situation by clicking on the link. Children are inherent to report and parents should make sure that online button is safe for children. They have asked law enforcement to provide this reporting mechanism for them. Many ISPs have done so but many have not, and they are probably less safe as a result of that. But it is my opinion that by working together with industry, law enforcement industry and the end geos can deliver a much safer environment for young children. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Thanks, Graham. I hear we have a question from remote participation. 

>> REMOTE PARTICIPANT: Not really from a remote participation because there are not that many who have joined yet. Have we received the report from our colleagues in Moldavia who had their workshop yesterday and the day before on this topic? And they sent us a number of questions or comments and outcomes of their workshop. And I just wanted to give you one interesting comment that was made, a question or comment because it comes from a different part of Europe. They have very specific concerns there. And the one big concern was that in apparently Moldavia a lot of parents have to work abroad. So the children are termed “very little supervision”. I wanted to say that this is a big problem for them because they believe since the parents can’t be there with them a lot but as mentioned before they are afraid that they do not get enough protection and they wonder what can be done there. It is a bigger question. I think it goes beyond just the Internet as fear now. But I think it was quite an interesting impression from that part of Europe. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Okay. Before I want to give you the floor again if you have any immediate responses or questions, I want to come back to our Finnish friends because you introduced yesterday your project, the Finnish children’s parliament and you told us in a special workshop that topics you are talking about are often chosen by adults, what you are talking about. This topic of safety on the Internet or this kind of how do I act on the Internet, has this ever been a topic discussed in the parliament children’s site so far? Or do you think it would be a good topic to say it? We are all adults here and we all know how to protect and I mean it is also the role of adults, of course, to protect children. But maybe not only. How do you see it? Do you think it is a topic that should be discussed? 

>> Yes, I think they should discuss about that. There has been only that kind of thing that do not open any servers that you haven’t really opened by yourself. Or it is not from the children’s parliament or something like that. But I think that it is really good to discuss what – what are the risks and your responsibilities. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Okay. Any remarks at this stage? Yes. 

>> Yes. Jess Richardson from the European Network and Schoolnet. Regarding the question from Moldavia, we have a very similar question very often. I think most of you know the family safety kit that we have put out in 15, 20 languages and we receive requests from orphanages and from boarding schools where they have the problem. There is an expectation of parents but there aren’t parents there and they can’t give the one to one attention. And this is part of the reasoning that has led me to believe that, in fact, we are going about this the wrong way. The safety messages we are giving are not really being integrated in to the young children as part of the e-citizenship and what really needs to be changed is the curriculum at a very early age to the socialization process actually talks about privacy. You can talk about privacy in a reading book for 6 or 7-year-olds. This is the piece, this is the road that we are taking right now looking at developing support for these very young children because parents can’t do everything and it is the unlucky children who don’t have parents who need a lot more help. Also I would just like to underline that you said there was not research. There was some excellent research that came out from OFCOM two or three weeks ago. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: No research but very little research done so far. In the online study. Nonetheless the important message here also given to us is when you discuss it with teachers it has to be integrated in the curricula. When you discuss that with teachers, you say talk on various subjects at school and often you get the answer I have so much stuff to teach. Nadia, you want to mention on this? Because you are not only a Diplo representative and working scientifically on that topic. 

>> Nadia: Hello, everyone. Two things, we had like this – I am structuring myself. There is very little research of how parents are actually dealing with – they are called parenting mediation styles. There is a huge body for parenting styles for TV, for example, and the effect of kids and their learning outcomes, for example. There is a smaller body of research literature on how kids, that is, parents are parenting for online games, and so far if you know more and like to hear, insofar I only know one research which was issued in December 2008 from the Nixon Helsburg on how parents mediate online to their kids and they made research on which parenting styles are existing and whether these parenting styles have an effect on reducing risks or enhancing, empowering kids on the net. If you wish I can give you a quotation. At this point what I would like to stress there is one research on this. And maybe coming back to the point who is actually in charge of taking care, care on the kids to empower them, to guide them through this – to this online world, there is an idea coming from German schools like they are educating peers where they take people who are – kids which are the same age, like the child they would like to educate and they train them. And then they go to their peers and say hey, come on, did you know and everything. This seems to me one of the most prospering and effective ways to tackle this in the coming years. Thank you. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: You are nodding and you seem to support that. Can you tell us, you are also dealing a lot with this relationship, teachers, parents, what can schools do to train maybe parents? Should they – could you tell us a little bit about your work in this project? 

>> Of course, I can. What my colleague was just saying I absolutely agree with what she said because we are the cyber volunteers and we try to teach people that know technologies and how then teach others. One of the aims of our foundation is the responsible years of all types of applications and technological applications. One of the projects that we have been working on for three years and Telefonica has supported us and works side by side with the local government. So thanks to that work we can directly get to all of the schools of that area, and we have meetings with these school directors and thanks to those meetings we can talk about our cyber volunteers and help schools and the school directors contribute them to help mediate through talks, and these talks are for the children and for their parents. And depending on the age of the children we work on awareness raising and give them the knowledge, talk about the risks of Internet and how to deal with them and then they tell us and it is kind of a bidirectional work. And when they are at a lesser age they tell us what they think the risks are in the Internet and this is a way to get them to participate. And it is very interesting what we try to generate within this school to make this an ongoing process with the teachers who do know the tools and how important security is and they become cyber volunteers and the school itself becomes involved in the programme. 

And so we give an ongoing sense to the programme. We find that we see that whole schools then become the teachers and parents that are involved in this whole process. It is a very complex type of work because at the end of the day we are recruiting volunteers that try to contribute to foster this internal volunteers in the school and plant that seed and they will then become in charge of security. And also we try to get to the local governments so that they can maybe sit some challenges, maybe make video presentations to schools for children. So that the issue of security is a local issue at a school level, at a family level and not only do we have talks but we also – the parents through the talks we try to convince them they don’t have to be experts in technology but they have to be aware; they have to be close to the children, ask them and just to make sure that parents don’t lose authority. So it is very important that they are close to their children on top of all these issues. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: The message is maybe we shouldn’t have this classical top-down education. A vice versa maybe. There is a gentleman here in the room that says being an educator or a communicator does not make you a so-called EDU communicator. Richie from EU University. I have the feeling because we have talked a little before, because we all do the teaching, all pictures must be forgotten to some extent in this dynamic process in the Internet. 

>> I will speak in Spanish. I would, first of all, and if we have time to discuss the issue of protection which has been discussed a lot over the last 20 years and has a lot to do with these vaccinating approaches. It is interesting to talk about the protectionist approaches. I am going to refer now to the issue that Matthias referred to. The first comment that I would like to make and to all of you here and to all of you who are following this on the web, you are media literate. Each one of you is literate in computer technology logically. But the question is are you media literate. That’s my first question. Are you media literate. That’s a question. It is a question that I am posing. Each one of us is literate in our own language. Each one of us can read in our mother tone and maybe we can be literate in a second language as well. We can read a message. We can write a message with my ballpoint pen or an extension of my pen, could be my keyboard and my computer then, we heard this from Guttenberg where most messages are written. This is the second or third phrase where messages are written. 

This group works with the Internet on a daily basis. Do you think that you are media literate? Do you know what I mean by media literate? First of all, media literacy is a central issue of the Council of Europe and to be media literate is to be able to read the different media, to be able to understand and to reflect and to read critically and to be able to be a producer of messages as well. So to ensure to be able to be a producer and consumer, prosumer. We are going to call that to be a prosumer. The majority of young people use this language without knowing the potential of using images, different types of images. And sound, of course, has its own language just like the different languages. 

Here we have regulation and media language also has rules. So the different bodies, we advocate media education in – and this media literacy education as we say in English and in a reflective and critical way. Why do I say a reflective and critical way? Because in the beginning in the 1970s and 1980s this was linked to teaching through newspapers. This was initiated by the New York Times. It was to train future readers. Future readers of the New York Times were trained. I am wondering if these different strategies developed within the different bodies, are they trying to train people – I don’t identify here with Telefonica, for example. We are here in this environment but this is like a television programme where the different personality consume our product and the negative people consume the products which don’t form part of this company’s sponsorship. So my invitation to you is that this is media education – if you give me two more minutes I would just like to know what are the key concepts of audiovisual leaders. Does anyone know? 

Let’s do a quick exercise here very quickly. First, my colleague from Germany said that the young people don’t distinguish the reality from virtuality. Now this issue was, this question was asked 20 years ago. Children and adolescents do not distinguish images from reality. Simple silly exercise is take a piece of paper like this, I would like to do this with each one of you to see how we can verify and show that media do not represent reality. The media don’t reproduce reality. What they do is build a reality. It is a built reality. So if we take – I see that my colleague on the other side of the room there is a few – I can make my own camera and I can make a small – a hole in this paper and I can look through it. I can look through that hole in the paper and I find if this camera that I just built and if I look through my camera that I just built I can see just that one person or I can look at Matthias or I can look at the person in the very back of the room, but I cannot look at all of you. So one of the key principles of audiovisual literacy is that the media do not reproduce reality. It is a representation of reality. It is a construction of reality. And all of the media make these constructions. And Internet does the same. Telefonica is a construction of reality and my university is a construction of the reality just like each one of the institutions that we work in. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Some aspects, maybe people have other opinions. You are shaking your head. You or anybody else who wanted to intervene? You are the first one to. 

>> Okay. Yes, I would like to contradict it because I think what you have shown us is the view, we can call it the media because for – I would totally agree for TV, for other media you are right but I won’t agree for Internet and just open up the discussion, whatever people think about it. Because I think with the Internet we have a different situation. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Yes, please. 

>> I am going to speak Spanish. It is much easier for me. I would just like to mention my name is Friota Haye. I work in IBM and I am a data officer. I think that the law is behind reality and that’s always the case, and what we are doing in the society is to solve the problems we have. Because we see these problems every day. And I would like to share with you just a short story. This happened as a mother. My 7-year-old daughter opened her first e-mail account, opened it up directly and her friend learned her password. And then they weren’t such good friends anymore and this girl started to send e-mails to other girls in the class and insulting them but in the name of my daughter. And I had to apologize to the parents of all those other girls and I talked very serious to this supposed friend. I am a privacy officer and sensitive to these issues. I am saying that our children are exposed. Our children need our guidance all the time. I would vote for what we are doing now, the – in the society we are fixing things up as best we can. They give talks to parents, volunteers and then I repeat those same talks to children in school and so forth. And with the help of the local government in Madrid, they are doing very well and support us because they allow us, those of us who are supposed experts to give talks at school and I think that’s how we are solving the problem at this stage. Thanks very much. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Yes. 

>> I am from the cyber crime organization. I would like to note concerning the – what you said but what the colleague from Safe Internet Programme in Spain said concerning the families and parents maybe who haven’t specific knowledges or they cannot teach their children, they are not maybe beyond their children and I would like to raise the question about the vulnerable groups of the population and specifically about the children with migrant, this target group and children have full and specific concerns and needs and not only concerns in access on the Internet but also how to use safely the Internet and how to – and the question that we pose and how to promote the cyber culture. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Okay. This gentleman over here, please. Yes, yes. 

>> Okay. I am going to speak in Spanish. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Garthia. I am from UNICA. We are a technology company. So I am going to give the point of view of a technological industry of how to deal with this issue that affects us all. It is clear in my company, UNICA, the main control that a young person has is education and that’s very clear and the responsibility of parents and tutors is also quite clear. But as another person said like in Moldavia sometimes parents can’t take care of everything and that’s where we are with technology. That’s where we can find parental control, filters that we have on the Internet with software and so forth. So what I want to know is if you think that parental control as it exists today, is it satisfactory? Does that really protect children on the Internet? That’s basically the question I want to pose for everyone here. Are there effective parental control methods on the Internet right now? 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: And then I wanted to give the floor back to you. Yes, please. Yes. 

>> I will speak in Spanish. I think that almost all of the contributions in the different areas that we need to work are important to parents, schools, industry and I have the feeling that even with all of this work children are going to be moving in completely different fields. I work at the university, a major university here in Madrid and I have two children which are at a risk age and I have the feeling that we have to reflect on the values that children need to handle themselves. So this self-protection is essential which is more difficult to achieve when parents are not such great parents and children are in this risk age. But we have to – the school directors need to think about this issue as well. And my school director said that when we talk about technologies in the classroom, they realize, first of all, teachers are often lacking information and the small children up until 12 or age 12 or 14 not all are prepared or have the skills to be online all the time. So they start to find – see that in the classroom that technologies as we seen in other areas accelerate differences. So not all the children are at a stage where they can use the network, they can be on line. And from an educational point of view they are starting to think about how to deal with this other group of children that don’t have the maturity and they need more time at school and academics. So these values are so important that schools have this accentual role to play. 

>> Everybody has been talking about how to protect children. The Internet is a way to participate. You should encourage them to be on the Internet. We have been discussing on our websites it is easier to influence on line because you can create your own opinion without caring about the other’s reaction because nobody is going to tell you oh, that’s wrong. I don’t agree. I think that....and then because the parliament is a national working participation channel and there is 9 to 13-year-olds all over England. We have cooperators. There was discussion should we take them in to our discussions because they were thinking that they would run all over. And now we discuss about this one and we cannot say anything. And children can do anything on the Internet. That’s true. But they should protect themselves also, but they can work as chairmans there based on conversations which are really I think quite good. And they take participation seriously if the adults take it seriously. And because there is such – there is not just such many ways to participate and there has been also thinking and I have been thinking that adults are afraid what we will say if you give the floor to us. 

(Laughter). 

>> And because – 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Thank you very much. 

(Applause.) 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Yes. 

>> And children can use the Internet and you should not teach them that. Instead to start thinking about how do you use it, for example, at school. You should tell us all the risks and – but also those things that I get on the Internet and for us online and offline participation are working us together because I think that the Finnish children’s parliament couldn’t work without our physical places to meet and also we need that discussion on the Internet. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Thank you very much indeed. I think it was extremely important. You reminded us to not always talk about the risk but the protection. What does it mean, empowerment. One gentleman over here already got a movement in her work, participation. I will give you the floor in a minute. I want to just give the chance because there were two other persons who wanted to say. This gentleman over here. Please. 

>> I will speak in Spanish in order to be more clear and faster. Basically I am Perro Sanchez. I am from a European startup for children. And I would like to comment on a few issues. That is the legal limit that is conditioning the services on the net. If we take European action, these limits change. Sometimes we talk about 12 years of age. Sometimes 13, 14 years old. So the CEOP society is setting a limit, which is 18 years old in order to be part of social and citizen society. But there is another very important limit on the Internet. I am talking to 14 years of age, 12 years of age which sets the limit and from that age onwards the child can exist on the net. But there are very young children who are already participating on the net. What I would like to stress is that in most sites you see that you have to be over 18 in order to use specific services. But this is a kind of a hypocrisy because they are getting rid of the problem and then there are many organizations that have the task of explaining to use many of the services. I think we have to lobby and put pressure so that there is more civil responsibilities so that companies use appropriately. They have to take for granted that children surf the net and use many services and they have to be ready for that. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Briefly. 

>> Yes, I will be. So we are not only trying to reach kids in order to educate them in a proper and responsible use of the one media. Also in charge of reaching parents to educate the kids. We learned that parents are hard to get. So this message goes to all employers, companies and work council people. There is one full thought which came up yesterday about vocational training for parents at the workplace. So maybe it is a time to elaborate on that concept also as a new way of reaching parents and bringing the joy of this media in to families. So that’s it. Thank you. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Join media and families. Good quotation. Okay. Before Jean – yes, Anna, I promised you. Please very briefly. 

>> Anna: Very briefly, going back to the comment on the professor is protection now dated. I think now with the more interactive Internet where children are the producers of content we have to talk much more about responsibility and installing in children the sense of digital citizenship of knowing what is wrong. What are the boundaries. What they can do that is wrong because there are wrong things they can do on the Internet. Cyber bullying and harassment should not be accepted. Talking more about responsibility. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: What’s the opinion on the child? Spain? 

>> I am from the office of – I prefer to speak in Spanish. We are talking a lot about protection. We are dwelling on educational issues but we haven’t talked much about minors and children in this environment. It is very nice to see teenagers and young people here who express their views. I would like to talk about 12 articles of convention on children. Because it is very important to take in to account the views provided by teenagers and it is important to let them take the issues within their fields. I think that we have done a lot on protection issues, but in the future participation is going to play a leading role. I do not have specific data, but I would like to give you an example of one of our pilot experiences at the European Net in order to defend children. There is a council for children. In Madrid we have nine kids who tell us about the experiences and the problems. What they think as regards the rights of children, we have to uphold. The European Network has a council for children, ENEYA spelled with a Y. So children are very keen on studying specific fields, have education and one of these fields is the Internet. 

I hope to be able to submit some resource in May but they are facing, for example, the issue of access to the Internet. The participation of children on social networks, they are facing issues regarding privacy. So it is important to consider Internet as a tool in order to get closer to culture, for relation activities, education in Internet. Ways to report abuses committed on the net and then there is an emerging issue regarding protection. Cyber bullying. I hope that in May we will be able to submit some conclusions through our website. And I expect the government and the institutions and the society as a whole, I hope that they take advantage of all the opportunities that we have in order to take in to account what our teenagers and children have to say in this regard. Thank you very much. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: I want to go back to the point that you were again also mentioning this protection point and we just started this discussion also to say do we talk maybe too much from this protective side and we have, for example, guests with us from Amenia. 

>> Tetaca: My name is Tetaca. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: And you say the youth and technologies opportunities are important. And not so much talking about the risks, what do you mean by that and what’s happening in Armenia? 

>> Tetaca: I am speaking on behalf of the media education center, a nongovernmental body which has launched a number of media literacies, online safety and e-learning programmes in the country since 2008. And we have seen in the last two years media center, activities in the country engaging teachers of young people. We invited government representatives to join our initiative, which initiatives we started from schools. And today we manage to bring this issue to the general, the public council of Armenia which is an advisory body of the president of the country. We established a safer Internet committee in the country and model 350 participants we had during this last year and a half to our workshops and roundtables. Our main approach was protection measures should go hand in hand to media education. Why? I have to go to some historical background, getting rid of censored media. The nation has not forgot its habit to read between the lines. So in our country where the number of broadband Internet users is growing very rapidly. At the moment we have recorded some 74 – and with an ever great demand for the high quality communication purely protective measures do not gain much support of public because fear of danger fields tremendous opportunities for civic participation. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Do you think, for example, in Armenia that more people are sensitive to the issue with regards to protective measures from somebody and what should be more this question of self-empowerment? 

>> Tetaca: I could say that the usefulness of Internet filters, for example, is challenged and there are a number of reasons for that. For example, children are very quickly learning to break these tools and to deceive their parents. And besides there is a – the belief among people that use them must learn to cope with complicated situations on line in order to be able to develop healthy immunity offline. And at last we know that most of the studies show that youth must risk phone line harm and there are still those that risk offline harm. Now what – if we look to the situation in Armenia, how – we have a couple of years ago we were speaking about the access. Today we have nearly 100 percent of mobile Internet penetration. And nearly 90 percent of school children have mobile phones including 5, 7-year-olds and in respect to usage and production to – in most cases they are much ahead of their parents and teachers. And this is considered to be very normal in the Armenian society which is very often called child centered society. And our adults by the way they never fear that children could obtain much power than they have. 

On the contrary we think that children and students, I will be brief, children and students who are some 70 percent of all Internet users in the country can radically change the painful situation with the Armenia content on the Internet, it could be useful for the adults also. So external resources account for around 70 percent of the whole Internet traffic of the country because the local resources mainly do not meet the expectations of the Armenia users and that is why we work towards such media literacy practices in Armenia which would help children to be active creators of content of adult. And I would like to bring one comparison, one – just one little comparison. So that don’t having local content, this does not mean that we have nothing to show. For example, the number of only Armenia manuscripts surpasses the number of Armenia articles in Wiki. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: George, I know you want to take the floor and I know you are very sensitive on the topic of how protection is used and just a brief comment. 

>> George: It is not so much that I am sensitive. It is that I am running out of patience here. I think that all of – I mean we are still discussing and debating and identifying the issues. We have done that. I mean the research is there. It has been there for a decade now. The Internet is in the ’90s. What I am saying is we need to act fast. It is like we have identified solutions. They are there and we have identified the issues there as well. It is time for us to move on and start pushing the governments as members of the civil society, as members of the governments themselves who are here in to making this – making legislation possible in to enhancing the way that the education system is working and more so for us working in geos, work directly with people in bringing this issue to parliaments. It is enough talk. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Enough talk. 

>> George: We should at some point do things. We are losing another generation here. Every year we are. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Absolutely, you are right to say. It is too much talk. Lady over there. 

>> I am going to speak in Spanish. I have been working at the social network for children. It is called Tribal. And I wanted to make a comment. We are all very concerned about the safety for children. Something we forget about is common sense for children and common sense that parents have. We don’t need a thorough knowledge of networks but the dangers that children can come up against. Parents don’t know very well. So I think we need to realize that children aren’t stupid. So there has to be proper regulations but maybe we need to trust a little bit more in the capacity of children and the transmission of values from parents and teachers and we all don’t need to be network experts. But we need to know dangers in general. Offline the world is still more dangerous than the online world and children do survive. I think we need to base what we do on common sense. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: I have just three more minutes now. So really very brief interventions. Yes. One? 

>> Thank you. Very brief. I want to highlight the children’s rights. We are talking about children’s protection. I just like adults, they have a right to express to access the Internet and to associate in cyberspace. Our experience from your developing who are going to protect children and then just block access of children to Internet and overrestriction. So I think we need to have the legal framework. Guarantee children’s rights and go along with safety. Thank you. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Okay. You there. One more. We have to look at the time. 

>> Yes. I would like to underline that teachers are trying to do a lot. They are fighting against a very difficult battle. There is very little material validated by educational ministries. There is no real substance in the curriculum about how to integrate this. And lastly there was a very good social networking system called Ming, that a lot of teachers were using Ming to develop social networks in their schools where young people would be safe. One week ago we got the announcement that Ming is going out of business because it doesn’t want advertisements coming in to the schools. So it was trying to keep it clean. So now what are we going to do about this? Protecting a platform which was good and which simply can’t survive due to – 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Thank you. Graham, last intervention. 

>> GRAHAM RITCHIE: I want to say that I think we need to be quite cautious about drawing an opposition between opportunities on the one hand and protection and safety on the other. I think we need to recognize that there are two sides of the same coin. My closing statement would be that we can reconcile both approaches under a new desk course of empowerment. Empowerment for young children. Empowerment to take control when things go wrong and empowerment to think critically about some of the things that they encounter when they are on line. 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Thank you very much. I am extremely sorry that we have to stop here but I just want to say one last word because George, of course, made a thinking and in some way it was written and enough talk. Yes, George. Maybe to repeating maybe old quotations that were said. But I think it is – especially workshops like these are extremely important but because we still say not the solution there, that you go to governments for, for example, and say do a certain curriculum, but that it is such a complex issue as we all know. That I think it is absolutely important that people like this come together and do it especially on a face-to-face talk and maybe not only just in a chat room or e-mail where somebody likes sometimes to hide. I thank you very much. I apologize, it was clear that we couldn’t solve all these questions. We had quite a variety of questions and answers and I apologize to anybody who couldn’t take the floor but we are bound to the organizers. Thank you very much. 

(Applause.) 

>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Anything you have to announce? Okay.

[[Category:2010]][[Category:Sessions 2010]][[Category:Sessions]]