What’s good and bad about Social Media? International Safer Internet Day in Uruguay

Safer Internet Day was celebrated on Tuesday, 11 February 2020, and, once again, stakeholders joined forces across the globe to work “Together for a better internet”. Some videos, carried out jointly by Ceibal Foundation AGESIC and INJU, were shared in order to raise awareness on this subject. The videos captures the perceptions of young people about the Internet, identity and digital footprint, online security and digital literacy.

Ceibal Foundation conducts several activities aligned with the goals of promoting the safe use of the internet, in particular to understand how students, teachers and parents are using digital technologies; to promote research, knowledge transfer and evidence-based policy making in the country and beyond regarding education and technology; and to establish good practices in the field. Moreover, the foundation aims to build skills and capacities in the field among policy-makers and institutions, teachers and citizens.

The actions are developed around the following strategic pillars: digital citizenship; Internet governance taking part of the National Committee for the Internet Governance Forum together with other 9 national institutions; digital ethics through the Ethics Committee for the Use of Data in Education integrated by experts from 15 institutions; among others.

Under the digital citizenship axis and strengthening the already existing collaborations with AGESIC and INJU, the project called “Perceptions, use of Internet and digital technologies in young people” was conceived in order to investigate and generate inputs that allow to know the perceptions, ideas, knowledge and activities that young people carry out online.

What experiences do teenagers have about using Internet and the social networks? In order to know their perspectives, we invited a group of Uruguayan adolescents to participate in a reflection workshop. The thematic areas defined to be addressed were (a) Identity, digital footprint and privacy; (b) online security; and (c) digital literacy.

The outcome is five audiovisual pieces that present perceptions about: screen time, digital footprint, the good and bad of social networks, the importance of “likes” and finally, do the networks respond equally to women and men? These materials were shared by the institutions that are part of the project, Agesic, INJU and Ceibal, and were very well received by the public. About 20 thousand views were reached, in the Foundation and Plan Ceibal channels. Twitter represented almost 75% of them.

What is Safer Internet Day?

Safer Internet Day aims to promote a responsible, respectful, critical and creative use of digital technologies, especially among children and young people, and to call on all stakeholders to play their part in creating a better internet. It is organised by the joint Insafe/INHOPE network of European Safer Internet Centres (SICs), with the support of the European Commission. With a global, community-led approach, Safer Internet Day encourages everyone to come together and play their part for a better internet. The campaign involves children, young people, parents and carers, teachers, educators and social workers, industry, decision makers and politicians from over 160 countries around the globe – and more!

This year’s 17th edition was held on 11 February, with the aim of highlighting the positive nature of the internet, under the slogan “A better internet starts with you: together we learn cyber security”, inviting us to join the global movement, participate and make the most of the internet to bring people together.

The promoters of this initiative have already announced the date of the next edition: Tuesday 9 February 2021, and the beginning of related activities in September 2020. More information about this Day – https://www.saferinternetday.org.