The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you and to have this wonderful and knowledgeable group of experts, and I am quite sure that we are going to learn a lot with them on the issue of child online protection. And we have organized this panel in two parts. In the first one, we are going to listen from our experts the most recent reports that was conducted globally by UNICEF, so we are going to have the Global Kids Online Report that was prepared by UNICEF-Innocenti Research Center in Italy. Then we are going to have European Kids Online Report focusing on European countries. Then we are going to have the Kids Online Latin American Report.
This is the first part of this panel. We are going to see the results and the main findings from these different regions. So it is very nice that we have speakers from different countries, different regions, but with a single and common methodological framework, which is the Kids Online framework.
In the second part of the panel, we will encourage the debate on the implications of data and evidence for policymaking in this field of children's rights. And then I will try to save some time after the two parts so that we can have some time for questions and answers, and because we don't have much time and so many speakers, I will be very strict with the time. I will give you about eight minutes, ten minutes maximum.
And before giving the floor to these wonderful speakers, I'd like to make some reflections about how the expansion of the Internet, in particular through mobile devices, which is a reality in many, many countries, especially the Global South. In Brazil, for instance, the country where I come from, the mobile became the most important device to access the Internet. And of course, this poses some issues. And this expansion, in particular for mobile devices, has intensified the possibilities for socialization, for participation, for access and search for information, entertainment, et cetera.
And of course, this intense adoption of Internet by our children creates a wide range of new possibilities, new opportunities, but at the same time, it also poses new challenges and responsibilities for parents, educators in terms of ensuring rights and well-being of our children in this digital age. So we are talking about a very important topic.
From the perspective of children's rights, I would like to recall that this year, 2019, we are celebrating 30 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by UN, as you know, and this celebration is an important event which, by the way, was broadly adopted by countries worldwide. So it is an opportunity for us to take stock of the advances and challenges to protect and to promote participation of children in an increasing digital society.
And finally, I believe that the transformation caused by the dissemination of digital technologies requires that policymakers, the private sector, the ICT industry, and also to civil society organizations that have relevant voice in the policy debate to reaffirm their commitment to treat children's rights as an absolute priority. So I think that with that, I would like to highlight the importance of this session, of this debate. And of course, needless to say, the importance of producing quality and reliable data to input in the policymaking process.
And with that, in our first part of this panel, I think that it's kind of setting the scene for the debate on policy. So and today is also a very special day because we are launching those regional reports. And with that, I would like to give the floor to Daniel Kardefelt-Winther from the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, that will give us a broad view of this report prepared by UNICEF. So Daniel, you have the floor.
>> DANIEL KARDEFELT-WINTHER: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Alexandre. Good morning, everyone. It's a real pleasure to be here, both, of course, to talk about the report we are launching today, which you can actually find at the very back of the room, but also to talk about the work of the Global Kids Online Network broadly as well as our sister networks in Latin America and Europe. And I am very pleased to be doing this together with so many of my colleagues who have been working together on this for many years.
Can we get the PowerPoint up?
I am going to talk briefly about the Global Kids Online Network, which we started about four years ago, because we saw that the evidence base on children's digital experiences was not really strong enough in many countries around the world to guide policy and practice. Let me see if this works. And so we established a research network with a purpose of producing high-quality evidence on children's digital experiences. And we developed, together with our colleagues, a standardized toolkit of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. And the really interesting thing about this methodology is that I think it kind of signifies best practice in research because what we did was that we took the very high-quality methodology developed by the EU Kids Online Network -- you will hear about that later -- and we tried to bring that to countries outside of Europe. We tried to improve on it to make sure that what we did built on the best possible foundation. And then, in turn, last year, the EU Kids Online Network built on the methodology that we had then refined and made it even better. So it's a really good example of kind of iteratively improving on research, and it's been a fantastic experience because it's been so full of positive collaboration. There has been no, you know, competition. We are all striving for the same thing. And I think that's been a really powerful experience, and we have produced high-quality evidence as a result.
So the Global Kids Online project has been implemented in about 18 countries. We've reached about 25,000 children since 2016. You can roughly see here the country where is we work, although more countries keep joining the network, so it's always a little bit outdated. And for the report that we are launching now, we are using data from 11 countries. It's about 15,000 children -- Internet-using children -- age 9 to 17. You can see the countries listed at the bottom. And we wanted to do a first comparative look across these 11 countries to pull out some of the main patterns and some trends that we see in the data. I will leave it to my colleague, Sonia Livingstone, to talk about what we learned from speaking to children around the world about their digital experiences.
>> MODERATOR: Well, just to mention that Sonia Livingstone, since very many, many years, is leading this initiative, and outside Europe, Brazil was the first country to implement Kids Online methodology, and we have been doing that for eight years now on a daily basis. So, Sonia, I would like to hear from you your comments on this Global Kids Online Report.
>> SONIA LIVINGSTONE: Brilliant. Thank you very much, Alexandre and Daniel and colleagues here. This has been, as Daniel said, an extraordinarily collaborative enterprise involving many people in many countries and many experts and, indeed, many children.
So in my few minutes today, I am really going to pull out some of the highlights of the findings from our 11-country comparison, and you can read more in the report that we've put at the back of the room, and even more in the full report, which we've put on the Global Kids Online website, which, because we have asked as many questions as we could possibly ask of children -- in fact, as many as one can ask a child before, really, they would like to go and do something else. They provide the opportunity and the limit.
So we think of the nature of children's experiences online in a series of kind of categories, and we begin with the question of the access that they have to the Internet, which is still an absolutely crucial issue in very many parts of the world. And then from questions of access, we really want to understand what are the activities that they engage with. And I think for many in the Internet governance world, where we began by thinking about managing and governing Internet in terms of desktop computers, the key finding first is the very important nature of mobile phones and mobile phones especially for children. We still ask about other devices, but there are questions still to be pursued about the quality of access and the what it is that one can really do on a phone. But as you can see in the summary, mobile phones are the most popular devices, and home is the most popular place. And many people will talk about the responsibility of parents, and we explore that in our research, precisely because home is the number one place where children go online. And school use, we can see, is increasing in many parts of the world, already very high in some parts of the world, less so in others. And there is clearly an issue for many countries about how early school use should begin, and so we see many children using Internet in school at secondary level, fewer at primary level.
When it comes to what children do, we've spent a lot of time thinking about why children so much love videos, gaming, chatting, kind of the entertainment activities, and we are going to make an argument about how those things are important, not simply to be restricted as somehow time wasting.
And then we've given some thought, we ask a lot of questions about access, but we also ask about all the things which are to do with child rights. So how much children use digital media, use the Internet to seek for information, as is their right under the Convention, for civic engagement, and to express their expression and civil rights and liberties, including looking for health information, looking for news, and so forth. And here we see this is more older children, and there I would raise some questions about how much we want younger children also to be engaged in the full range of possibilities online.
So we've conceived within the network of a kind of a ladder of online participation, and we've put up a schematic of this ladder here so that you can get a sense of how, when children first gain access to the Internet, most often they play games, they watch videos, they chat. It takes some time, both developmentally as they get older, and also in the country as the Internet becomes more familiar, for children to become more active online in terms of posting comments, looking for health information, talking to family and friends who are far away from them, and looking for news. These are indicators, if you like, of the kinds of activities, and the reason we place these as a ladder is that the evidence supports the idea that the bottom rungs are more popular, especially among younger children, and also because we want to raise these questions about where do we want children to go, so we are trying to use the nature of the evidence to raise some questions about what do we want children to be doing online in a normative sense as well as showing you what they are doing in an empirical sense.
And particularly, we proposed as a hypothesis the idea that it is those bottom rungs -- learning, chatting, watching videos -- which enables children to develop the digital skills to go further up the ladder. And we make this point in the context in which in many countries there were anxieties about children's screen time, how long they are spending online, and whether they should be banned from certain activities, especially in school. So here is our hypothesis, if you like. They need those early activities to climb the ladder to fulfill and exercise many of their rights online.
Across the project, Global Kids Online EU, also Latin American Kids Online, we always think of opportunities and risks. We try to put the opportunities first, but of course, we also ask many questions about risks and the skills that children are developing, which allows them both to access the opportunities and also, we hope, to mitigate against the risks.
In the survey, we asked a number of questions about different kinds of skills that children have. These are, of course, self-reported, but we've done some effort at validation to see if the children really do have the skills that they claim. And just a couple of bullet points here. You can see that children have learned more about managing their privacy online, perhaps because many adults have been concerned to encourage them, and still struggling with privacy information, perhaps because adults are still struggling with these questions.
We have different risks online and the relationship between the activities and the risk, and perhaps here is the key challenge for policymakers, which is that those who encounter more opportunities also encounter more risks, that the two really go hand in hand. The more children do online, the more they get a full range of experiences, positive and problematic.
And before I present the risk statistics, just to make a point that we really keep trying to emphasize, which is that encountering risk is not necessarily the same as being harmed. And the child's right to protection is the child's right not to be harmed. And risk is, as it were, the probability of harm but not the necessity. And as we will also argue, and I think many in this room, that some measure of risk online is also necessary for children to learn to cope and to become resilient. So when I show the risk figures, as I will now, we must bear in mind this question of how safe we want children to be. We really want them to be protected from harms. We may need them to encounter some measure of risk.
So these are risks. In other words, did you encounter self-harm content? Did you encounter suicide content, hate speech, violent content, sexual content? And now you can see the range of countries. We don't have data from all 11 countries here, but from a good spread of countries. And we should emphasize that these are the statistics for children who use the Internet in the country, and that is also different. So in Italy, Internet-using children is nearly everybody. In South Africa or Ghana, it is not; it's a minority, it's a fraction of the children, not all the children.
In earlier EU Kids Online research, we found that when we asked children, actually, they are concerned about a very wide range of risks, but sexual content and violent content have often come near the top.
So as I said, children are most often using the Internet at home, and parents and caregivers play a really crucial role, as children tell us in the survey, as well as the way in which their role is positioned in policy. So we have done a lot of exploration in the full report, which those of you who are statistically minded might enjoy reading. But the summary is really to try to understand what can parents do, because when parents are uncertain and anxious about the Internet, their instinct is often to restrict. And yet, as many policymakers and educators have tried to say, there are other things parents can do and that they are learning to do, and we think of these as supporting activities, as enabling activities, explaining to children, sharing the experience with children, and so forth. So we are trying to open up the range of activities that parents might engage in, and what we find in the research analysis is that when parents take a primarily restrictive approach, children engage in fewer online activities and tend to have weaker digital skills. So even though we understand parents' desire to take a restrictive approach, it has some costs. And what we've been exploring in the report is how there can also be benefits from when parents are more supportive, encouraging, and enabling their children's activities, which brings benefits to their digital skills, but only -- we must be honest -- only slightly reduces their exposure to risk, and that's where those questions come in about resilience and how much risk can society tolerate for children and at what point must we take a more restrictive approach.
So forgive me a slightly crazy slide. This is my last slide, and it has too much information on. But it really offers you a lead-in to what the next session, the next part of the session, will be about, which is who is using these findings? And in the last year, in Global Kids Online, we hired an independent consultant to go to all the different countries where we had been researching and ask the questions of the policymakers: Are you using these risk findings? Is this any use to you? How can it benefit you? And this is just a snapshot of a report that we will release very soon, in the next month, I think, which offers some of the ways in which different stakeholder groups in our different countries say that the research has been useful to them in guiding their actions.
And as you'll see, it's a bit of a scatter gun. There are some who use the research to inform their child protection policy, some who use it for their education policy. It gets taken up in different ways, and for the researchers in the room, you will know that research -- how research is taken up is always a bit beyond your control. And you have high hopes that research will bring many benefits, and sometimes noticed, sometimes not. This is really important where Kids Online works with a multi-stakeholder network. So within all the different countries, there are educators, child protection experts, those connected to the state who are working to see that the policies developed in those countries are evidence based. So we hope that should we come back in five years and redo the assessment, we will find further benefits.
So I'll stop at this point. I just wanted to give you a screenshot of the project website, the Global Kids Online website, and note that it's divided in two. Under Tools for Researchers, we make all of our methods transparent, and they are all available open access under a Creative Commons license. So anyone who would like to use part of the survey or learn from our many expert reports about how to do research with children, questions of research ethics with children, and so forth, everything is available there.
The second half is our research results, and these are fed through as they emerge under the research updates, so if I took a screenshot today, it would show our new report, but I haven't quite -- did the screenshot last week. All the results are there and are also available as open access available reports. And we invite you to watch for the updates, join the network or inquire about joining the network if you are so inclined. We are always looking for new countries to do research. And I am going to look forward to the discussion that follows. So thank you very much for your attention.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sonia, very much for this inspiring, insightful presentation, and I would highlight the fact that this joint initiative, London School of Economics in UNICEF, is a major contribution to countries willing to produce data. And the beauty of this is that we are talking about internationally comparable data, which is essential for cross-national studies. And of course, producing cross-national studies is fundamental for policymaking as well. So thank you very much for your contribution.
With that, I would like to give the floor to Cristina Ponte, Professor Cristina Ponte from Portugal, University of Lisboa, so that you can provide, Cristina, comments on the European report, which is the second piece of report that you launched today. You have the floor.
>> CRISTINA PONTE: Thank you. Firstly, I would like to thank you for this opportunity for being here and presenting the new survey of the EU Kids Online and the results on the generic question that is related with the topic of safety, let's say.
Could you put the PowerPoint? Yeah.
So this is the second pan-European survey. The first one was conducted in 2010, eight years ago, in a very different digital landscape. And as you may see, the survey now includes 19 countries, more than 25,000 children, and in 12 countries, these 12 countries that are bold participated also in the survey in 2010, so it's possible to make some comparison of the results.
I start with this image concerning access, as Sonia said, and it's very interesting to see how this is a global trend. Nowadays, the mobile use through the mobile phone is dominant but it's not only dominant, it's constant. As we can see, in all countries, it's not daily, but several times per day or all day. So there is a strong intensity of use. In France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, the average time that children report to spend online doubled when we compared with the 2010 results.
Moving to the questions that I would like to share with you, because our European report is still in progress, so I choose this topic, in the beginning of the section on risks, I should cite, as Sonia presented, we shared the same questionnaire, so there are much more questions than on risks. There are questions on practice opportunities, skills, mediation, but I chose this question, and this question is exactly the same we had in 2010. It's placed in the top, at the beginning of the section that is headed with risks, and we asked children to identify, to report if in the past year they have felt anything that has bothered them or upset. And as we can see, the range from the 19 countries are very different, hence they range from very low values, for instance, 9% in Slovakia and Germany, to 45% in Malta, and in Switzerland, Spain, Russia, Czech Republic, and Romania, this situation is reported by about one out of three children. In relation to 2010, these rates increased a lot in most of the countries. Now gender differences are low, but in all senses report more risks in young children.
When you Look at this image, you can also see most children report they were upset a few times a year. However, the first one, the first column, we have results from those countries where the results were higher, more than 10% of children say this happens every day on a daily basis. So this is something that it's interesting to pay attention.
Following these questions, these general questions, we asked two subsequent questions about how children that reported they were bothered with the situations coped with risks. All children talked after this situation. As we can see, we have here different kind of people. And interestingly, there are some common trends, very visible in the results that are in red. These results show more than 20% of children answering today choose one of these. This is, of course, a multiple-choice answer. We can see at the top we have peers and parents. Peers in seven countries are reported by more than half of all children, and parents are reported in two countries, France a Croatia, by less than half of children, so we can see the relevance of peers of their own age. We can also see that another adult they trust is also expressive in two countries, at least more than 20%, in Spain and Poland. And on the other side, teachers, professionals, and someone else present quite low results. Interestingly, the last column, it's the column where children sign they didn't talk to anyone. And as we can also see, almost 20% of children are in this position, so it's something that -- and in several countries, this position is relatively high.
Another point I would like to show is another question related to this coping is what they do when they found a bothering situation. And three reactions are at the top. First, they close the window or the application. Second, they ignore the problem or opt it to go away by itself. And with the same value, we have blocked the person from contacting me. So in this third question, this third answer, we clearly identify that is a contact risk. In the other situations, we cannot identify what is happening. Could be publicity, could be advertisement, could be several things. But it's interesting also that some advice that children are told in these years, for instance, changing privacy settings receives 14% of attention, and report the problem online receives only 12%. So these are also numbers that invite our attention.
So to finish, I have three kinds of questions that I would like to share with you. First is a question about the possible relation between the new constant access through smartphones and increase of negative online experiences in general that children report. What kind of problems bother children online when they are using mostly mobile phones to access the Internet? New problems arise with this use. The second question is regarding abuse, let's say, and contacts, contacts that the children are not okay with them, so blocking the person is at the top. But we have relatively low rates of reporting abuse or changing privacy settings. And I leave questions, are these technical solutions not seen as efficient by children or they have already privacy settings? The third question is related with factors and actors of trust. As we see, trust is very relevant in their relation with peers, siblings, parents, and other adults. So it's not a problem of generational gap because parents and adults they trust are recognized as people they want to talk, they want to share this experience. On the other side, teachers and professionals that deal with children are less reported. And I asked why is this happening. It's due to their voices of authority. It's due to the gap between the ICT curriculum and children's digital practice. It is due to the school culture against smartphones that we see in several countries in Europe. Why so many children do not talk with anyone? Do they feel guilty because they have experienced this bad situation? Does it depend on the bad situation they are considering, they are thinking in the moment of the question?
And on the other side, we also see the relevance of the peer-to-peer mediation and training. And one good example is the European School Net, the program on digital leaders that has shown how peer-to-peer training is relevant for children.
So the full report is coming soon, and I hope that these questions show the relevance of having appropriate research that is very useful for stakeholders, different stakeholders, including children and families, and also to policymakers. Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Cristina, very much. From this report, we can see that we have similarities in terms of behavior, in terms of taking advantage of the opportunities, and also how children being mediated by their parents. And with that, I would like to invite Daniela Trucco from UN ECLAC, Economic Commission on Latin America, and show results on six countries we have been collecting data in Latin America. As I mentioned before, after Europe, Brazil was the first country outside Europe to produce regular data, comparable data, and the network in Latin America, network of researchers, has increased very, very fast, and today we have already reports from six countries, and we have some maybe two or three more in the process of planning their survey.
Daniela, you have the floor.
>> DANIELA TRUCCO: Is there a problem? Thank you very much for the opportunity. I am here representing several institutions and researchers. Several of them are here. It's a report that we are having for four countries, not six yet. We are probably launching it soon, January/February. But we are in the editorial process and have much of the results here. There we go.
Before beginning, I just want to tell you some of the specific characteristics of the context of Latin America, different from other parts of the world. In the first term, inequality is one of our main characteristics as a continent, and then global changes driven by technological development and digitalization occur in this context of historical inequality, which structure the different areas and life experiences. The expansion of the digital age has been accompanied by the digital gaps that widen existing inequalities in relation to access to information and knowledge, make it even more difficult for the social inclusion of part of the population and limits their ability to develop basic skills for full participation in current societies. That's one of our characteristics. The other one is that education, education policy, has played a key role in equalizing digital opportunities in this region. And then the third one that I would like to show is that given our levels of access to Internet, there's a very high level of participation in social networks in general for the population. That's special from Latin America.
I am going to -- since we have ten minutes, I am going to focus on the main findings and policy recommendations of the report. The report's going to be online with all the findings, but I am just going to show some data on the main policy recommendations. In the first place, material access is still an issue in these four countries. Despite the advances in the -- sorry. Can you hear me? Yes. Despite the advances in the access gaps to the digital world, promoted in particular as in the global trends by the massification of mobile connectivity, considerable gaps remain. Mobile connectivity has diversified the types of access available, allowing more free and permanent connection, what we have called ubiquitous access, meaning that you can have constant access everywhere. You can see that in this graph, the prevalence of material access modalities that we found in these four countries. Most of the kids that are connected still access at home by the cell phone, which is the most limited access that we find. And then the above part of the columns show children having a constant access either by their cell phone or by multidevice, but it's a few part of the population connected that have this types of access, and we see in the report that the constant access has important implications for the opportunities and participations of new generations in the digital world.
Beyond where and how much the Internet is used, the type of activities that children and adolescents carry out is also unequal, and this results in divergent opportunities to participate in the digital society. So skills to advance in the same time as the gap related to digital skills that facilitate the real benefit. Parent and adult mediation is a central factor.
The results of the study show that the use of the Internet in schools varies widely between countries. You can see in the graph mainly they access at home, but there's also a big proportion of kids that access Internet at school, but it's different in each country. Even though -- and it illustrates the importance of the educational policy implemented in some of them. Even though education policies in these countries have moved from an emphasis in providing access from equipment to a focus on skill development, there is still a long way to go in terms of strengthening the schools' and teachers' roles in this process.
However, digital policies for children cannot be restricted to the education sector, which has been the tendency in this part of the world. Using the participation skill developed by kids online that Sonia also talked about, the ladder, results are consistent with the global findings in terms of a more common use of Internet for socialization and entertaining activities, as well as educational learning in this part of the world. But citizenship and community activity are less common, suggesting the importance of mediation roles to promote a full inclusion in taking advantage of the opportunities of the digital world, especially in these times, where there's -- the social networks have played a key role in many of the social movements that are going on in Latin America right now. This poses a significant challenge to the policies in children of training future citizens on promoting their active participation, information, evaluation of news and critical information. Also, during childhood, this process is mainly played at home. How do we involve parents and assess their own needs related to digital skills? And that's also part of an important social inclusion policy question, in order to reinforce mediation strategies.
Exposure to risk is also evaluated, as you know, in the studies. And here I show just one of the indicators that are evaluated in these types of questions. And children and adolescents that have been contacted online by a person they did not previously know in the last year. According to age, you can see that it's more common as children grow older. Exposure to risk is considerably extended in the population studied, with particular emphasis on adolescents, particularly women in some of these countries. However, as sensitive as these issues may be, the situation is rather of risks and not of damage per se, as Sonia mentioned earlier in the global trends too. The greater exposure to the Internet undoubtedly increases the risk, but also, and consistent with what we said before, also the opportunities for greater use of the benefits of the digital area and the opportunities to develop the skills required to participate fully. Thus the importance of providing children with the tools and capabilities so that in case of facing situations of risk, violence, or need for self-control, they can make informed decisions, use self-care and protection strategies, as well as have the confidence to discuss these issues and their effects with close adults.
On the other hand, it is also essential to move forward in comprehensive policies that include different sectors involved and regulate the protection of users, especially in the framework of children's rights and the responsibility of the private sector in the protection of personal data that has been discussed in several of the meetings we've had in this forum already.
And finally, I want to show you the book contents. Then it's going to be available soon. We have a first chapter with regional policy and statistics, the context of Latin America, and then we analyze with the Kids Online data material access, which I showed some of the results here. The educational context, the school use and teacher mediation, participation of children and lessons in the digital world, more centered in citizenship. Online risk management and self-care. And finally, a closing section with the main challenges that have been discussed here in the presentation. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Daniela. This is very interesting because we are talking about four countries that have comparable data. And when we look at the role of teachers and educators in the schools, you can associate the results of policy, like in Uruguay, where the proportion of children accessing Internet in the school is higher than the other three countries because Uruguay has a very solid policy fostering ICT in education, and you can see the result of the policy reflected on this data.
So with that, I think that we saw the results for 11 countries in the report of Global Kids Online launched today. We see results of 19 countries in Europe, report coming soon. And also we see the results of 4 countries in Latin America; also the report will be soon available online.
And with that, having seen all the statistics, I would like to ask you to keep your questions for the last part, after the second part of the session. Now we are going to move to a more open debate on the implications of data production in the policymaking process that guarantees children's rights. And with that, I would like to ask our colleague, Guilherme Canela from UNESCO, to give us a broad perspective in terms of policymaking, and I would also like to highlight that in Latin America we have three very important organizations that are giving support, including financial support, for the conduction of those surveys, being UNESCO, UNICEF, and also UN ECLAC. Those three organizations have legitimacy to establish a dialogue between data producers and policymakers. So I would like to thank very much UNESCO, UNICEF, and UN ECLAC for this support.
Guilherme, you have the floor.
>> GUILHERME CANELA: Thank you, Alexandre. Good afternoon to you all. First I would like to thank you very much, Alexandre, you and your team, for putting this together. We know that you did all the work. We are just sitting here, but you do all the bureaucracy with IGF, so that was really good for us to be here.
I would like to start with a story. Many years ago I was invited to a famous Spanish painter, Juan Miro's, exhibition, and they had an experiment. There were the paintings, and we were behind those glasses that people can see us, and they invited some adults to go to see the paintings, and then they started asking a few questions, but basically, the questions were how complex the adults thought those paintings were. And they started with those kind of comments, oh, this is very easy. Look at this. This is just -- these guys are saying this is a bird and whatever. No? Then after the adults left, they invited the children of these same adults to the paintings without the parents, and we were there, and they started doing similar questions to the children. And the children started saying oh, no, this is very difficult. I couldn't do this. Look, this is so good. How can we do something like this? And really it seems like a bird. So many times what we do in the adult world is this. We think that the children behave or they think about some of those issues in a given way, but very often it's not like that.
So first key element for policymaking -- and we here at IGF are lucky that we have lots of lawmakers here, we have judges, we have international lawmakers here. It's very important to listen to what the children have to say about those issues. And I think this is perhaps the most important result of EU Kids Online, now Global Kids Online and Latin American Kids Online, and that is offering to policymakers and lawmakers the perspective from the children with solid quantitative data, but also with some qualitative studies.
Second element, media in general, but also us as human beings, we are very much interested in these risks and harm. There are reasons for that. We don't cover as journalists every plane that takes off well or that lands well, but when a plane crashes, we cover it because that's life. So when we talk about harm, when we talk about fear, when we talk about risks, inevitably, this calls attention. And if there is a case of revenge porn that leads to the suicide of a teenager girl, or if there is a case of awkward game that generates some problems, these will call the attention of politicians. These will call the attentions of decision-makers. And we can't refuse that there are problems, that there are risks, that there are potential harms. So that's why, again, this kind of data is very, very interesting because we need to tell the politicians, the lawmakers, and the decision-makers yes, but be careful. These cases might not be the overall picture. So here you have solid evidence to take your decisions, how to deal to the particularity of this damage, but also how to deal with the broader perspective of policy in addressing those risks, but with an overall perspective that our challenge is to mitigate the risks but also to leverage the opportunities. We can't see this problem only from the risk perspective and only from the harmful perspective. We also need to see this from the opportunities perspective in this case. So this is the second point that Sonia and the others already explained. The data offers this. These not neglecting the side of the protection, of the risks, even the harms that actually happen, but this is only one part of the story. The element of opportunities of a rights-based approach as including the children in the center of this discussion is in the very heart of the approach of EU Kids, Global Kids, and Latin America Kids Online perspective.
Third, the opportunity to do these networks is also important because this issue is more and more a common problem with, obviously, regional and national particularities. But the opportunity for showing to policymakers, or even to us international bureaucrats, as is my case, that this is not something that is unique to the particular country or particular constituency, that there are discussions, that there are commonalities on how children are dealing with those issues, but there are also differences. This is very important, not with the purpose of ranking countries, but with the purposes of showing that different countries are finding interesting, creative solutions, but also are doing bad things in terms of policy. So we need to take stock of the good things, of the good practices, and avoid the mistakes that some are doing in addressing those issues.
And the other network effect of this discussion and the data that you are showing is that we can put people who normally don't talk together. Because it's not the case that in the countries you don't have policymakers and decision-makers doing the promotion of rights side of the story. They are doing. Educational authorities, but then you have law enforcement people, prosecutors, that are doing the harm, fighting against harm, prosecuting crimes part of the story. What is the big issue here? They don't talk to each other. So you have the people doing the children's rights, putting children in the center, promotion, opportunity side of the story. And then you have the law enforcement, child protection, et cetera. But these people are not seeing that this should be noticed and produced as a comprehensive and coherent set of policies instead of isolated initiatives trying to tackle the different parts of this puzzle.
So for me, one of the beauties of Kids Online is that you put this together in one report. We are not showing only the risks and only the opportunities and calling attention to this. So this is my fourth element of this discussion.
But even though, there is something that is missing here, unfortunately, with even us being in the 30th anniversary of the Convention, that is reinforcing, enhancing, and fostering freedom of expression for the children, freedom of information for the children. And Internet offers here a unique historical opportunity for children to exercise those rights without the mediation of the adult world. And this is really the first time in history that this is possible, and we need to go deeper in this possibility. And in fact, children can help a lot in producing better policies if we include them in the discussion and we respect their freedom of expression and their need to access to information to take decisions.
The other element that is very important, Sonia already mentioned it, is that this can help a lot to enhance resilience. And those data need to offer to the politicians, to the policymakers, this idea that policies to address those issues should include this component, how we enhance resilience, and this has to do with the already-said combination of risks and harms and how they cope with risks, et cetera. No?
And then there is a point that it's my suggestion, perhaps, for future developments of this, is money. We need to talk about money. We need to talk about budget. We need to talk about how -- he showed me a two-minute sign, then I will please conclude, so I don't know if I forward in time and I had the kind of Einstein bridge problem here or it's just -- (Laughter) When I mentioned budget, he said no, this guy is going to ask me for money go. And then I will tell you a final anecdote, then I had a third one, but then we can discuss it during -- in Brazil, in some point, seven -- Brazil is a federate country, not 27 states. 17 assemblies of those states approved laws forbidding the use of cell phones in classrooms. On average account, producing a law like that costs $1 million, all the staff time, congressmen, congresswomen. If those people had invested $17 million in producing research to understand what is the best way of having cell phones in classrooms, this would be so much smarter than forbidding. I am not saying there is not issues with having cell phones in classrooms, but the question is what is the best way to address it? And again, solid data, evidence-based data can talk about that. But we need to talk about money. We need to talk about budget. Because otherwise, policies are -- all these recommendations, et cetera, are very beautiful, but how we put that in the most important element of having these in a public policy that is the budget law every year.
So congratulations again. It's really always a pleasure to be with the Kids Online family. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Guilherme. It took you two minutes to see my two-minute note, so immediately, I had to put please conclude. That's the reason.
(Laughter)
You should have looked to me before.
Well, now, we are going to give the floor to Alejandra Erramuspe, the national agent for electronic government and information society and knowledge from the Government of the Republic of Uruguay, to give us a perspective from Uruguay how you are dealing with the data and policymaking, how do you input this into the process of policymaking. You have the floor.
>> ALEJANDRA ERRAMUSPE: Okay. Thank you, Alexandre. Good morning, everyone. I want to thank the organizers to be here for Uruguay to be part of this panel. I am here on behalf of the team who works hard in Kids Online in Uruguay. Let me mention some of the people involved in this project, like Matias Dodel and Cecelia Hughes -- perhaps all of you know them -- and Susana Dornel.
For those of you who don't know Uruguay, let me introduce in a few words Uruguay. It is a small country in South America. Let me see. It's a high-income economy. Okay. I think I can. I don't know. Okay. Thank you. When compared to other countries in the region, Uruguay stands out for its political, social, and economic indicators. We can also say that Uruguay is a small but digital country.
Based on a medium- and long-term mission that considers that digital development is not neutral, the government set out to reduce all digital gaps. The paradigms of all the technological development that Uruguay has experienced in recent years is based on inclusion and equity, like you see in these indicators there.
Today we can say that Uruguay has good conditions to address the challenges of the information and knowledge society. Uruguay has also a long and rich tradition of studies, measurements, and official statistics, serious and reliable historical trends, but not specifically about this population. This study, Kids Online, was the first one done on children in Uruguay. In this regard, this study contributed in significant terms, and it was perfectly welcomed by the whole community. It was implemented in a multi-stakeholder manner, such as the implementation of digital policy in the country. Those are the indicators we have.
A remarkable aspect of this study is that all the institutions participated in the whole process, in the whole process, in the process, in the analysis, in the design, and the final report is a consensus document from all the participants. That is so important for us. The organizations that participated in the study were UNICEF, UNESCO, AGESIC, Plan Ceibal, the Catholic University. I don't know if all of you know Plan Ceibal, or you mentioned already. Plan Ceibal is an organization set up in 2007 as a plan for inclusion and equal opportunities with the objective of supporting Uruguayan education policies with technology. Getting back to the Kids Online, we can add that the study in Uruguay had very many interesting findings and allows us to reflect upon what lies ahead.
We can summarize the key findings of this study as follows: All children connect to the Internet, increasing using individual devices. Second, children recognize of the difficulties in regulating Internet use but seem the same difficulty in adults. Parents have little knowledge about the contact their children make with strangers on the Internet, both in case of virtual and face-to-face contacts. And the fourth, opportunities and risks seem to go hand to hand in Uruguay Internet use. This study has been taken to enhance and strengthen the public policy for inclusion and digital development that the country already has as well as those that are under development.
I go ahead. As you know, the challenges in this area include not only children but also teachers and families, the entire educational community. One of the main aspects is to prepare children to obtain the greatest benefit from the digital society, how to prepare them to know how to do, what they know how to do, and what they can learn, also taking into account that their rights are not violated. Besides, we are clear that the ecosystem of applications and devices usage affects the type of activities being carried out. The types of skills acquired is what determines what educational and social opportunities they will have in the future. To address this, the formal education has already incorporated resources developed for the teaching and learning model, Ceibal in English, Laboratory of Educational Technologies, that includes teaching program robotics, 3D models; access for practicing math; Ceibal digital library, free access to more than 3,000 digital resources. But it's not enough. We still have to add in the curriculum of the basic formal education contents that attend the digital formation.
Kids Online also highlights the need to train in cyber security and online risks. Regarding this, there is already dissemination and awareness campaign, such as (Speaking non-English language) security and privacy, developed in the country. But also, because children have high levels of exposures to ICTs, like you know, autonomy of use is necessary to have a critical approach for that in our campaigns from specific topics, data protection of cyber security, a comprehensive approach, being a digital system.
These aspects have not yet been incorporated as specific content in the basic formal education curriculum. That is still a challenge for us. Regarding teachers, Kids Online Uruguay shows the teacher how to motivate children to explore and learn. It is important that adults get involved in what children do on the Internet, shortening their distance, and avoiding thinking that they know more about it than we do.
There is a wide range of continuing education courses for teachers in the use of technology in educational fields. But they are optional. What does it mean? These courses does not accumulate merits for the teaching career. It's still necessary that this process of training in new technologies in education be formally and explicitly incorporated into the curriculum of teacher training. Today it's voluntary, not mandatory.
Another initiative we have from AGESIC, working together with the Plan Ceibal and National Pu
blic Information Administration is preparation networks to work with teachers and trainers. These networks are mainly aimed to teachers from school, high school and nonformal education. It includes face-to-face training with the liberty of teaching material to work in class, courses online on issues related to digital citizenship and digital citizenship confidence. So far in 2019, 4500 teachers and trainers were reached.
Another initiative is a digital citizenship library. You have the links there to access to these initiatives. Can including printable materials like teachers' guides, user information for children and adults and posters. It also has online courses on public information access and data protection. I brought some materials here if you want to take a look.
Regarding families, parents, first of all, I should say that Uruguayans for digital policy has been successful in adult digital literacy, but it's necessary to work on the development of meaningful skills so they can accompany the protection of children's rights online. Awareness action developed with the community, family, teachers, and training students and teachers. One of the actions developed is through the educational system monitoring platform, where, among other things, students perform information, like attendance, school, and evaluation, is managed. Parents, to get informed about their children's performance in school, in the public school, must access that platform. Then it is used as an information channel for these topics. We also developed a media campaign to raise people's awareness about digital citizenship. In these videos, many different persons give their opinions on topics about information society and the use of ICT. But we must recognize that the strategies deployed to address these are still very much inadequate. Although we are a small country, we would say here there is a problem of scalability. This is a challenge for politics in the next period. In this sense, if we had to choose a group of priority, they should be the responsible adults of these children.
To close, let me say that Kids Online in Uruguay is part of a long road, not destiny. Surely new problems will appear. In the short or medium term, establishing periodic monitoring mechanisms to study the evolution of the phenomenon is a priority. We have to continue investigating for advancing in this area. In this sense, I would like to tell you that Kids Online is going to have a next measurement in Uruguay, and the team are discussing an innovation in the study. The study will be in the schools with kids and their parents. The design challenge is going to be that, include the parents of those same children, the pairs of parents and children.
Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Alejandra. It may seem that being in a small country with smaller population, things should be easier, but it is not like that. It's a matter of good policies and vision that makes a country really to develop effective policies.
With that, I would like to give the floor to Amanda Third, who is in the Digital Social and Cultural Research Center at Western Sydney University, to give an academic perspective of the relevance of data and evidence in the policymaking process. Amanda, you have the floor.
>> AMANDA THIRD: Thank you so much, Alexandre.
Well, as someone who has not at all been involved in the production of this very fine report, I am going to go through it very quickly. There are copies on the back on the table just on the right-hand side as you are leaving the room. Please do take one. It's a really good read, fantastic, and full of good, solid evidence. I think the words "gold standard," "rigorous quality evidence," "best practice," these are all words that apply to the initiatives that you have been hearing about on stage today. But of course, in the world of policymaking for children's digital practices, there is such a thing as good evidence and such a thing as bad evidence. Indeed, I think over the last 18 months in particular, we have seen some quite spectacular interventions into mainstream policymaking by very bad evidence, evidence that is based on population data sets that tries to establish correlations as causal relations, and which has been a primary driver of lots of knee-jerk policymaking around the world, including the quite phenomenal tidal wave of enthusiasm for banning mobile phones in schools around the world.
And I do think that, you know, it's really critical that we have high-quality evidence in these debates because I think we've seen as a consequence -- and you know, and I am referring quite explicitly to the article, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation, that went viral early last year, as one of my key examples. So, too, moral panics around things like the Momo challenge that, of course, claimed that a fiendish Japanese animation character had been spliced into children's YouTube clips and encouraged them to take their lives, reported by many reputable media outlets all around the world, and indeed, I was engaged to do a piece of national policy work because the national government was very concerned about this phenomenon. I had to confess that it was, in fact, a hoax, and we had in confirmed reports that this was actually a problem. So a very panicky media environment creating the context for a lot of ill-thought-out policymaking. So I think there's a very, very clear need for high-quality evidence.
I think one of the unfortunate consequences of the kinds of narratives that we see circulating through the mainstream media and receiving sort of feverish responses in policymaking circles is that it stigmatizes children's digital practices, and children themselves in the work that I have done consulting children in over 60 countries now, children are very acutely aware that adults don't appreciate or understand their digital practices and are crying out for adults to trust them more deeply and to make policies and initiatives and interventions that actually resonate with their lived experience. So I think as adult policymakers and other duty bearers in this field, we have a real obligation to listen very, very carefully to children and what they have to say. And I think that's one of the great strengths of some of the work that you've heard about today is that this is research with children as opposed to research on children. Children are very much engaged in these processes.
And when I say that, it's not just a matter of how these teens go into the field, but also a matter of developing research tools in consultation with children in order that we can actually understand the range of issues that they are facing and map them accordingly and develop the right kinds of responses. So I note that the Global Kids Online survey module, you know, there's a new module in development currently, and that there has been some extensive consultation with children in four countries to underpin that. Leading to some interesting findings. So for example, you know, as Sonia was mentioning earlier that the time online measure is not a good one to base our policymaking on. It doesn't correspond with children's experiences. When you have a mobile phone on you most of the day, it's very hard to estimate how much time you spend online. And indeed, we are corralling children into saying things they don't believe when we ask them these questions about their time online.
Also I think another interesting thing that came out of that is that children have to do a lot of work, often, to get online, and this is work that's often invisible to the adults in their lives. They have to navigate parental rules. They have to deal with failing batteries or old equipment or these kinds of things. And that actually, they have developed what you might think of as a skill set of work-around to make sure that they can, indeed, get online. And so I think, you know, it's really important to be talking to children and generating data around these things because, of course, when it comes to policymaking, we need to be signing off on these issues, the very real challenges that many children face around the world.
I think, too, obviously, we've got good evidence and bad evidence. When you have good evidence, it's not enough just to have the evidence, but you have to work very hard to activate that evidence in a range of different settings because, of course, the right kinds of change in policy for children and their digital media use requires a coordinated but -- or not necessarily coordinated. Coordinated is ideal. But certainly aligned efforts from multiple different directions, multiple different sectors.
And so -- and I think, too, the other thing is that children themselves see a very strong role, not just for their governments, but also for their schools, the NGOs that provide them with services, their parents, their teachers, et cetera. They see a very wide range of adults as being responsible for delivering the kind of policy change they want to see. So I think all of us across different -- you know, who have different responsibilities to children need to be thinking about how we channel -- how we generate then channel the right kinds of evidence into the actions that we take.
Okay. But I think also often there's a lot of pressure on the people who produce evidence to somehow also activate it, and I think there are things that we can do, and I think certainly some of the initiatives here on the stage have been doing that, to activate that evidence, namely to invite multiple different stakeholders into the process of supporting and generating that evidence so that you prepare a platform of well-positioned individuals to intervene in policy -- you know, to use that data and evidence in policymaking settings, and I think Sonia's last slide, even though it was a very crowded one and difficult to digest very quickly, just towards the very real gains that come from addressing stakeholders across these kind of data-gathering initiatives.
But lastly I'd like to just say also that in our efforts to activate policy -- sorry, to activate evidence in policy, we must also remember that children are very key agents in this process. Of course, the Convention stipulates that they have a right to participate in the decision-making that impacts their lives. Even so, I think many of us find it very difficult to deliver on that particular right for children. And so, you know, I think many of us are trying to experiment with different ways of engaging children in policymaking efforts. I think there is sometimes a tendency towards consultation methods that are very one-off. They go in to talk to children having already predefined the questions from a very adult-centered perspective. And they miss an opportunity, really, to encourage children to participate in the policymaking process in a meaningful way. So I think we do need to move towards methods that are -- consultation methods that are much less extractive, right, which don't simply see children as a resource that we need to mine for their views and their voices, but to actually think about consultation as an opportunity to encourage conversations with children, remembering that they are the next generation of change-makers, and that if we give them space to think about and develop their languages for talking about and encoding their ideas, you know, if we give them that space, then we take a step forward to a much better future in which our policy much more effectively targets the real needs of children everywhere. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Amanda, for highlighting the fact that we have to take into account the children's perspective, the children's voice in this process.
Well, last but not least, we are going to listen from Su Wenying from UNICEF China, to give us a more international perspective from UNICEF perspective.
>> SU WENYING: Thank you, and very privileged to be here, and thank you for all of you for sticking around.
So first, I am very excited to join this Kids Online family. I am a new comer. Because we, UNICEF China, last year we also kicked off with Kids Online study. But we actually adopted the Kids Online framework, instead of two questionnaires, et cetera, but it was very heavily contextualized, because we really -- you know, China is such a huge and complex country, we couldn't really do a national representative study. And we are now in the final stage of data analysis, and the final report is to be expected early next year.
But back to the question about policy and evidence-based research, we actually, at the very beginning, when we were designing this study, at that time there were already in China some existing research and findings about children's use of Internet, so there are some data there already. And we were thinking what, you know, could we offer that distinguishes our study from the existing ones? And because we are partnering with the Chinese research team who has very extensive experience working with children, we decided to highlight child participation in our study. It was not an easy process because, you know, child participation as a concept and a practice is not really embedded in Chinese or even the east Asian culture, because traditionally, we are a society that really respects the elders and authority of parents, teachers, and adults, who are traditionally not to be questioned. But there are still a huge appetite for young people, for children to speak up, you know, to share their views. A recent example is now in China, they are currently revising the law on protection of minors, and the draft of the revision of the law was published for the public to comment and, you know, provide recommendations. I forgot the exact number, but it was that the legislative branch received like 40,000 comments whatsoever, and half of them were submitted by children. So they are really concerned about the laws and policies that will have an impact on their lives. So the space is still there, and we want to work with children, support them, empower them to, you know, really participate in every step of this study.
So at the very beginning, the designing stage, we invited a group of child researchers to work very closely with us, you know, in terms of the questionnaire design, the language we use, and several test runs of the questionnaires. But that was not enough, because like Amanda just said, it was still sort of constructed in a way that, you know, how we adults think, and you know, construe things. But we want the children to have their own sort of choice of topics, and so we have sort of like a parallel child-led research, and children formed small research groups and chose their research topics. I think some topics are online gaming, online learning, online shopping, the use of short videos like TikTok, and very importantly, we also want to look into parent-child relationships in terms of the use of the Internet, which I think is very inspiring because they feel like that is actually at the center of a lot of the issues they face.
So they actually have some very interesting findings in those parallel small-scale child-led research they conducted. The methodology is simple. They chose the topic, they designed a short questionnaire, and they disseminated those questionnaires in their schools, in their classes, in their neighborhoods, and they collected those and, you know, do the analysis themselves, and they write the reports by themselves. Very readable, child-friendly, colorful reports. And a lot of the findings in those reports are really very inspiring, and especially, for example, in the parent-child relationship one. They actually listed, like, five things they don't want to hear their parents saying in terms of how they are using the Internet, basically like no phone, no games, or like you are useless. All you do is play, that sort of thing. And it is actually very powerful as well because when we -- we haven't published the results yet, but as some occasions, seminars, we asked them to share these findings with adults, policymakers even, and their parents, and it was really powerful because they do see the children's point of view, and in the children's language. And you know, I am all for evidence-based research and policy advocacy, but we all know that a lot of adult-driven policy agenda, sometimes, like Amanda mentioned, are driven by paranoia or emotion. When we look at the numbers and the data, sometimes we lose interest, we stop listening. But with those powerful children's remarks and their views, we do get people, adults, policymakers to listen.
I think that's, you know, what we should think about when we do this research. And also about how we tell the story of our research findings. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Su Wenying.
I will open the floor for two questions, very brief questions, and ask the speakers to react. Yes, we have one question here. Two questions. Three. We are going to take three questions.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. To begin, I want to congratulate all of you for this excellent work you have been doing for many years. As you said, all these research are very relevant for society and for policymakers to foster children's rights in digital area.
So I would like to know if you have any data about the amount of advertisement children receive in the Internet and how do they feel about it. And also I would like to hear from Guilherme Canela if you believe marketing to kids can affect their freedom of expression, especially when they are hired by companies to advertise products as digital influencers. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: My question is talking about policies. This is Maurice Hernandez from Mexico City. My question is what about parents and education systems coming from the government, liability, while trying to make our children learn on their own privacy. We are talking about policies, what the policy shall make sure, establish, whatever. What about our duty as parents, as government, as schools, as a society?
>> MODERATOR: One last question here.
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah, hello. My name is Igor Plahuta and mainly father, and that's why I am here. My question is do you see the need to extend the investigation on the health issues for the children?
>> MODERATOR: Since we don't have much time, I will give each speaker 30 seconds to address some of these issues. I will start with Daniela.
>> DANIELA TRUCCO: Okay. One of the recommendations -- and I am probably addressing more your question -- has to do with having a comprehensive policy articulation and coordination. At least in Latin America, the priority has been in the educational sector. There's a lot to be done there in terms of adult mediation skills, et cetera, curriculum, advancing towards a more comprehensive set of skills, not only in terms of academic notions, but also in terms of sociability, ethics, et cetera, but also in terms of inclusion of the rest of the adult population that is also excluded from these processes and cannot accompany kids. Plus what I mentioned in terms of regulation and protection and involving the private sector.
In terms of the question regarding of advertisement, I think the Brazilian studies have more information regarding that in the Latin America cases.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Daniela. Cristina, 30 seconds.
>> CRISTINA PONTE: Yes, I will just report to your question regarding advertisement to cite that in the Portuguese survey on Kids Online, we included an open-ended question about what are bothering people of your age, and for our surprise, it was very interesting because this didn't happen in 2010, advertisement was placed in second. So we see a rise of bothering situations. Now, probably this may be connected with the access to free games, access to videos, the cookies that is growing up and more frequent, so the digital path -- to digitalization is becoming more efficient for the monitorization of this culture. But what is interesting is this is seen as a bothering situation and not an appeal to consumption.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Sonia?
>> SONIA LIVINGSTONE: Thank you. So I think the three questions concerned with health, privacy, and marketing actually capture the areas in which we hope to be developing new modules in our survey, thinking very practically. But I also -- and we don't have direct data on those questions as yet because we really focus on what the child can say, especially about their -- as we've said -- their opportunities and their safety risks. But what I see as in common with those questions is something about the business model of the Internet and the way in which it is, as it were, pushing a commercial agenda, whether or not this is to the best interest of children, for their health, their privacy, or their freedom of thought, in effect. And at this point, I think it's really important that we take the research we do have, but it must be part of a much wider debate on whether there can be some other business model or diversification of business models emerging. For me, that's the key policy question.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Daniel?
>> DANIEL KARDEFELT-WINTHER: I will go for the health question. I think studying health consequences are important, but I would flag what we need more research on is it's about how technology can be used to benefit children's health, so around positive, supportive interventions through technology that can actually build resilience or prevent anxiety, help children cope with depression and so on. I think that's really what we should be aiming for rather than to think about only the down sides of it. Because really, I think if we look at the highest quality research we have on this, it's becoming more and more clear that health consequences are really fundamentally related to children's offline or real lives much more so than driven by things that are happening in the digital space. So more for the opportunities. I am happy to give you papers and such later.
>> AMANDA THIRD: Yes, I would echo those comments absolutely, but also I think what your concern in particular points to is the fact that actually parents need a lot more information about the benefits and possible harms of children's engagements online. I think, you know, there's a lot of responsibility on parents to do the right things, but we don't always arm them with the tools that they need, and so I think this is a really critical piece for policymaking to address.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Alejandra.
>> ALEJANDRA ERRAMUSPE: Thank you. In Uruguay, we think all of us, governments, researchers, parents, all of us have to work together, share the responsibility to protect our kids and teens from the risk of the digital world and help each child from the promise of connectivity.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Guilherme.
>> GUILHERME CANELA: Very briefly, two things. On the health question, definitely more research, particularly mental health, it's a very complex area. But I would flag we need to be very careful in the participation on the pharmaceutical industry in those research because these people want to sell more drugs to the children so they are producing all sorts of bad research with no hard evidence on those things.
On your question, Isabelle, it's very complex, but what I can say and we can discuss later is that there is interesting jurisprudence that freedom of expression also encompasses the right of not saying something. You can't oblige people, including children, in saying something they don't want, like marketing for something. So there is an interesting decision of the United States Supreme Court on that. We will have a session, 430, with judges from high courts, so perhaps we can discuss that in that session with more details. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Guilherme. Su, the last remark.
>> SU WENYING: Just quickly to respond to the question. First, I think it just shows like we, as parents, as adults, like children, we don't know a lot about, you know, this issue. And thus more research is definitely needed, and good, high-quality research.
And then the second point is even for this, we need to communicate and have dialogue with children themselves as well. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Well, it was a real great pleasure to moderate this wonderful panel, and I thank all the audience for staying until this time, lunchtime. This is an opportunity for us to raise our voices and try to bring this voice and also children's voices into this debate. So with that, I would like to thank all the speakers. It was a wonderful panel. Thank you very much.
(Applause)