The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
SPEAKER: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our session. I'm Sabrina Vorbau. I will moderate the session. The session is organised by the Better Internet for Kids Initiative and the Insafe Network of European Safer Internet Centers. What is the safer Internet Centers and how they support citizens at national levels. We'll hear two country examples today. We Poland and we also Portugal to help you understand how important the subject matter is. Very briefly. Next slide please. As I said, this is a initiative to create a safer and better Internet for children and young people. Not only in Europe. It is a portal where users can find more information and also resources in multiple languages on better and safer Internet. We'll look at current trends and issues for how to support young people, adults, educators, social workers, to support young people in this matter. Children and young people are at the heart of what we do. We have one of the youth ambassador with us today. We are shaping the voice of children and young people. A safer Internet Center, for those of you who are not familiar with it is structured on four things. The national awareness center, the helpline, hotline, and also a youth panel. In today's session, we'll focus on the importance and the objectives of helplines. Really acting as a first aid service in countries supporting users to supporting citizens, mainly children and young people. What to do when we were online. We will dive deeper into a little bit of country studies specifically from Bell our existing in each of the EU members state and Norway and Iceland. These statistics that I'm presenting here are from the April and June this year. We are collecting them on the quarterly basis. This helps us to assess what issues citizens are facing at the national level and how we can combat the issues and how can we help users to be more aware and also feel secure and protected? You can see here on the slides some statistics. First of all, who is contacting the helplines? You see the vast majority of people that contact the helplines are teenagers, young adults that seek help. Later on you'll see the most trending topics and issues. There are various ways how users can contact a helpline. Traditionally this was done by phone. But, of course, by today helplines are offering various different forms of contacts. Also ensuring anonymity, of course. Especially if we're talking about reporting sensitive issues such as, for example, abuse online or other issues. Many of our helplines offer, for example, online fonts or chat services. Because definitely it takes also a village for someone to pick up the phone to report something. Also for those who are more introverted to report the help.
You can see here helplines are available to adults specifically during the COVID 19 pandemic. We saw a lot of educators and parents contacting the helplines, seeking for advice, seeking for advice on technical matters and also seeking for advice on social matters as well. A final slide just to outcome the current trends and issues here on the right side. As I said, we'll dive deeper into the issues in a minute. Cyberbullying we see this has been really one of the top trends. Not only in the quarter, but for, many years. It seems specifically for children and young people this is the main issue they are encountering online. We see a lot of adults puzzled on how to help them. It is not only cyberbullying, it is offline. It is really an important subject matter. We also see an increase, for example, in subjects like sexting or sextortion which is one of the issues that we will comment closer on. When looking at the trends and issues, where do the trends and issues occur? It is mainly online. For the vast majority, it is on social media platforms. I think all of the young people spend an awful lot of time on the social media platforms. Not only one multiple social media platforms. It is really, really important that we step in that we also work together with social media platforms, but also policymakers. We from the Better Internet for Kids Initiative tried to bridge the information for the policymakers and really provide information for the end users. Now I'll hand over the floor to my colleagues. As I said, as part of the workshop now, we'll dive deeper into two country examples. We have colleagues here from the Belgium and the Polish. I'll hand it over from trends and operational matters of the Belgium helpline.
NEILS: Thank you. I'm Niels Van Paemel with the Child Focus. The mission is easy. We are the foundation for missing. It happens in the actual exploitation of minors. In the last two decades, we shifted a bit from children being more vulnerable offline towards more and more online. We are the Belgium safer Internet center. We are the Belgium helpline where kids can call on the number 116000 number 24/7 and free. Fires are first responders, and case managers are going to go in depth with the child and caretakers and even police and people that work in education who needs advice around one of the topics that we work around. That's the things that we do. What do we want to do? We want to create a better Internet for kids in Belgium. We want to inspire and support, strengthen media literacy, and we want to provide support for parents, professionals with, and children to the 116000 helpline. We report the child sexual abuse material. What I want to focus on today is the nonconsent of information exchange or NCII. These are all of the cases that we open at child focus and mostly children who contact us because their image has been spread. In the context of the school or whatever. Without consent, the images have been spread in the third parties. In 2020, we saw a big rise. Maybe it is because of the COVID. All children are inside of their houses. Maybe that's why they would go to more risky behavior. They might go more wrong because of it. After the quarantine, it is going to go down again. Look what we're seeing here. We're almost doubling the numbers. You'll see it is even more. We are seeing this actually going oh, my God. I have the wrong yes. We're seeing it as really on the rise; right? And not only in Belgium, it is a European phenomenon. Also worldwide. What do you want to tell you about this from working with all of the children? Also as professionals, people have the tendencies to go towards victim blaming. Telling the child you shouldn't have taken the photo in the first place. If you do that, children will have a more hard time to reach out to. What do we want? We want children to reach out when they are in trouble. Research shows in Belgium only 15% of victims reach out. We want to heighten that number. How do we do that? By making sure children know they are not alone. They were the victim of being. We can give them the tools to reach out, find help, and go to the takedown of certain images. Consent, that's a new word. It is all about consent. If young people exchange within the context of a healthy sexual relationship, if they want to exchange photos as such, that's not the problem. The problem is that somebody takes the confidence of somebody, receives a very personal gift, and decided to spread it to a much larger community. That's how we should look at it. It is about the confidence and sexual intimidation. There are a lot of things. It is what I said. We should try not to victim blame children who are reaching out to us. They can come from many sides. Parents and teachers and also police. The children reaching out to police when things go wrong. It is less than one, and less than 10%. It is what we really want to work with through many trainings. Then last but not least, gender stereotypical behavior is also a very plays a big role in here. As we see, we are opening much more and more cases of a child that calls us. Yes, in my school, there's the Telegram group, Sluts of School. A lot of boys will collect photos of mostly girls, but it is not always the case. Mostly boys collect photos of mostly girls and post it on platforms like Telegram. There we see the culture of exposing and it is finding its way where girls are being victimised with their own material. If you want to change this, we should really start working more and more with boys. Because we need to show them that's not okay to do this. It is not okay to be disrespectful and slut shame a girl. This is something we need to learn more about. If you can't find the boots, we started a project called not able where we try not to enable boys and talk about sexuality online. Where we want to work with them to give them the tools. Come find us at the booth later. I need to rush a bit. I'm sorry. We did a study last December. About deepnuding. Has anyone heard what they are? If yes, put your hand up please. Two people. Three people. Four people. Five. Okay. For the people in line, that's a minority. That's many more people here. That's 100 people. Deep notes are actually deepfakes. I suppose you know deepfakes. With the sexual connotation. People making fake images of somebody naked and can be videos. What do we do? We thought of this as having more and more. We got the helpline saying my photo is being spread across the school. I never made one. Turned out that actually somebody used AI to create a fake photo and then later slut shamed her with a photo she never took. This is something that's happening more and more. There was no research. Nowhere in the world. We did a study. We just went to look about the matter. How are the apps working?
How easily can you find them? Can you Google them? Turns out, yes. Spoiler alert, you can Google those. Just some numbers. You can scan the QR code. Just so you know. It is from last year. The number right now would be higher. 42% know what deepnudes are. 21% have seen at least one. 13.8% has received deepnude or more, and 60% of those who know deepnuding apps have used them. It is a very important one to know. And 99% of all of the victims are girls. Why? Because until somewhere in this year, the deepfake apps would not work with boys. They were mainly trained on female data. Actually this percentage now should be a little bit more down. We are opening more and more cases of sextortion with boys. Why? Because boys are the main victims. Perpetrators are finding ways to extort them. If you can get a fake photo, why not? It is easier for the perpetrators. Here we are.
Sextortion. Let's see. 2018 2023. The content is extortion. Does everybody know what Sextortion means? It is somebody that gets extorted with their own nude pictures. Mostly boys. 90% of the victims are boys. They get in to contact with another person online. They are chatting. The conversation goes in a sexual way. The boy is pursuit. Afterwards, they will have to pay money or the photos will be transferred to the parents or to their friends. They are being scammed basically with their own photos. That's what sextortion means. Sexual extortion. We have some ideas why it might be the case. First of all, people are online at a much younger age. They are having a much easier time to find them. They are starting to use AI to do this. This is something that scares us and really, really should work with children more and more. It is to stop this from happening. The extreme rights. It is just like this. In the presence got more and more picked up. This is a big problem. There's a link with sextortion and deepnudes. There might be a person that takes a fake photo. If you don't pay me, I'll show it to your parents. This is happening right now.
Right now you can be extorted or scammed with a real photo, or photo that was nudefied. What a completely fake photo. They use your face. Also on the grooming sites. Because if you want to pursue a boy to send naked photos, the boy needs to be groomed in the first place; right? They need to think he's talking to the sexy girl around the same age; right? Now with deepfake technology, I'm a 37 year old man. On the screen, you could see a 15 year old girl and also the voice of a 40 year old girl in any language that there is. So it's being made very, very easy for the perpetrators to find their way in to tackling young boys. This is something that we want to worry about. In the Insafe community, we are talking to my colleagues or even in certain African counties. We see it is a worldwide problem. It makes sense; right? The people who are looking for victims online don't think about necessarily have a sexual dress in the child. Just finding a way to earn money. It is all about gangs that are using technology. Yes. They want to scare people off. This is also maybe something that you should also tell you. They should rethink our prevention work. For example, talking in the past about sharing photos with their children. They say maybe you should watch out and sending them of your child. They might take the context. They might sexualise the photo. Now we can generate the material of children just by the photo of the face. This is something we should think about. On the one hand, we want to keep the safe message towards families. It is a good place. It offered for children. On the other hand, we were able to give the tools to children to find their way in a safe and responsible way. This is my last slide before I give the floor to my colleague, Anna. The challenges that we have now. The phenomenons are here to say. AI is making it easier for children to become the victim. The responsibility at the victim level is right. The data we need more studies, for sure. You can order the first study. Victim blaming was one of the first in the world. They need to go behind the dynamics. How is it happening for the perpetrators? It was prevention. Like I said, how to work with the flex. In the old days we would say if you are talking to them online, ask them to put their hand up. You can see if it is a fake image or not. Right now deepfakes is easy to see the red flags. I'm going to talking about like I told you with the gender parts. They would be using live deepfake technology. That's one positive thing. That's the fact that it has been made possible. If the child tells you I'm the victim of deepnuding, you cannot tell the person you shouldn't have left in the first place; right? That might be the only positive thing I have to say here. We need to have the discussion when we need to have and see things as they are. It is a gender phenomenon that we need to talk to the young man and boys about their behavior alike. Thank you.
ANNA: Everyone, I would like to express how happy we are to participate in the IGF forum. I'm absolutely I don't know. A little bit surprised. We're here since 3:00 p.m.
I think we've spoken with 30 or 40 people about how big challenges can safety align and from the different parts of the globe. This is exactly what we love at the Internet Governance Forum. It is so good to be here at the event again. Now I'll tell you something about how the Polish Internet works. I think there's a presentation. If someone could help.
Okay. I think we're here. Sabrina told you how the safer Internet centers look in Europe. Here the only information that builds the safer Internet center in Poland. So we cooperate the organisations and cooperate together. This is our Internet foundation, that's the NGO. It is the national research and I'm representing the NASK, the research institute. Here you can see what the competences and NASK is one of the leading institutions for cybersecurity. But we are also very involved in the safety activities. We've started our work in 2003. It's been 21 years that we operate as instructed. We cooperate together for the educational activity. Then the helplines are run by the foundation. Today we are focusing all of the helpline support that we provide to children. Next slide please. I have to go back. I have the content and direction. Okay. Sorry. So being the public institution as NASK, we are incorporated under the developers. We are very involved in the policy that's developed at the moment in Poland. I think one of the most important issues is now the new law that's being that has been developed. The law that's going to protect children from the illegal content. But also harmful content. Of course, we are as well in all of the process of the implementation of the DSA in Poland. Okay. We are also promoting the main activities, one of those activities that we are promoting also here at the booth, like Niels said, we are talking about safer Internet. This is like the big, global event. It will come very soon. It will be the 11th of February. You can come to us and we talk about it more. Here you can see some statistic on how the event looks in the programme. We managed to attract over one million and a half participants next year. We were trained every, every year to get more and more impact. Okay. Next slide please. Our main mission is Sabrina said. It is to protect children and secure their safe childhood online. Here you can see how the helpline services work in Poland. We have three branches of the helpline. We have the helpline which is 116111. That's available 24 hours, seven days a week. In two languages, Polish and Ukrainian. We have lawyers and psychologist and sexualuologist. It is very important in the 116111, 800 to 100 to 100 and the signatures. We don't have interns; we have only professionals. Also what we provide is offline assistance. There's something called the child on the web. They can come also to the centers to get offline assistance. Okay. There are all different types of reports that we receive in the helpline. One is the one that knew. Mainly because we wanted to talk about the most magic trends that we can observe in the centers. Niels was talking about extortion and I'll focus on cyber bullies. This is one of the most emerging trends, especially in Poland. Okay. I think all of you know for the electronic devices. These are a few examples. You cause the accident and you attack and you feel that and put it online. You can do frapping which is using somebody's identity if someone forgot to look out. It can be thanking one of the most serious risks that might happen for young people as well. You can have identity theft. Here someone wants to get financial benefits from that. Then, of course, there's the hate speech. I think of this we will focus mostly. What is the difference between cyber bullies and offline bullying? Sometimes we go away from cyber bullies, because it sounds like regular bullying. It is sometimes more important. They try in the same way. We have here the wide range. It cannot be stopped. We have this idea of anonymity. It is easier for someone to be a bully. It is very evident in the lack of adult supervision. Many of the cyberbullying cases, they happen in communicators like WhatsApp and messagers. They have huge groups of friends and peers. That's where the cyberbullying happens. They don't know about it.
And what is really problematic in Poland right now is we're on the top list of cases that the relationship in the cyberbullying. We are on the fifth place. Sometimes we are on the first in the research that you get online. It is a huge problem in Poland. Of course, the problem rises and the most of the bullies and the most of the victims these are kids around 13 years old. We can see this is the moment that we really have to start with all of the prophylactics and prevention. This is the moment where it is needed. 13 is when kids go to the Internet. In Australia, they put it 16. Now I think we're in a very international discussion if the social media should be available from 16 years old. This is when really the problem starts. It is somehow related to the age. Also what needs said. The experience it goes lower. Now it is the average eight years old. Then the time now from the research in Poland. It takes five hours and 36 minutes a day that the kid is in front. It is not helping with the fighting and preventing the cyberbullying. These are statistics. Here you can see that over 40% of young people that experience the situation of cyberbullying against the peers. This you can see the resources. Here you see the experience and closing style. These are the issues that very often are under estimated by the parents of the carers. People think, okay, what a big deal, yes? These are the options and the situations. These are the cases that are most often the topics for the cyberbullying. Of course, it goes together with the excessive use of the Internet. When the child is given themselves, yes. Then the photo is not receiving as much likes as it was respected. Always receiving some comments. Then the child is all the time online and checking the activity likes. If there's not enough likes, try to even sometimes delete the photo. This is also the tension around this. It is also obsessive use of the Internet. It is very important in our work. We talk more and more about empowering children and not so much about we talk about the protection. We have to try to know the accents and talk about improvement. This is also what creates by themselves. They are very good researching. Australia the second time, they did a huge job recently. There's a very interesting research. They've asked the young people what they need from adults to be more resilient for the from the cyber bullies and what they said was we need to have higher self esteem. We need to be able to create the safe relationship. We need to know how to be assertive. These are the competences they need not necessarily how to protect my, you know, profile, yes. They didn't want technical information from this point of view. What is the problem? They don't get enough empowerment for parents. They get good examples of how to behave online. I think it is a global problem. I'm not sure if you've heard about this cheese challenge or the egg challenge. This is something for me. It is absurd. This is the cases where the parents try the child in the challenge. The child is crying. The parent wants the child throwing the cheese. Then it is like a slice of a cheese. Then, of course, the child stopped crying, because it is shocked, yes. It is always filmed and put online. How funny my child reacts. Sometimes the child is crying. Sometimes the child is frightened. The second example, the egg example, the egg challenge is the parents invite the young girl or boy, a child, to cook a cake together. They prepare. Then in the moment, when you have to add the egg, to produce and the child is not happy. 5, 4, 6 of them with parents is something really cool. In the moment that you should put the egg to the cake. Then you broke the egg on the head of a child. Of course, the child is shocked. That's because all of the reactions are put online. It is funny. The examples from the adult are really not good. It gets millions of likes and disseminated. Here talking about parenting. It is part of the cyberbullying process that's happening to our children. This is the Polish research as well. Do they like when parents post photos about them. There's 78% of parents that post photos of their children online. You can see that 23% is not happy, they are emerging parsed. It is not a bad photo. It can be a regular photo. As I said in the few slides before, they really take a lot of care about their appearance online and about the identity they create. Very often because of some spontaneous posted photos by parents, they also get cyber bulled. They get bullied by their peers. Because there's still a very big problem, I would say I believe that kids have to talk to the parents that we can help. Very little percentage really goes to somebody when it happened when they experience cyberbullying. It is 38% over 38% would not go to anybody. Because what they hear from the first moment. Of course, because it all happened because you've spent too much time online, yes? They are afraid we will take the mobile phones for them. They will be victimised for all of the situations that happens. These are the procedures. This is the situation that we have to advocate parents of how to react when child comes to us. The cyberbullying case is so present online. It is even hard for them sometimes to say if they were bullied, somebody with the hate speech or just a joke. They are surrounded by the situations. We have to remember about the three rules. We have to remember about the child and witness and one of the most important actors. This is a person that's not that much emotionally involved in the problem that can react. What is a very important we always have to emphasis for the weakness that they center to react only in the way that is safe for them. Sometimes even not putting them the post is already a reaction. Sometimes to go to your parent is a reaction. But we have to always forget to the child that not all reaction can be safe for them. It is the first set on the street. The first information we get for the person who is learning how to give the first step is first. You have to secure your own safety. You have to check if not if any car is not come, yes? This is the same thing happens with the witness of the cyberbullying. We have to be careful on the signs that might happen. Each child can be react totally differently. There might be a child that's checking what is happening online. There might be a child who is not checking at all and just did not look at anything totally. The effects of the long term cyberbullying might be absolutely horrifying. It can lead to depression and self harm. I think I have to rush. We don't have too much time. We have to remember talking about the prevention, we have to always take care of all of the environment around the child. We have to do the action. We have to repeat with all of the situations regarding the safety of the child. We have to keep reading. That should be that. We as a helpline would try to secure all of the pathways to help the child. They will provide the right evidence and have to be present at schools. They were developing the right procedures. We helped with all of the collaboration. All of this happens between teachers, directors, and we give psychological support. We also have in the context of the operators and to know what is happening in our teenager's lives to know how we can help and incorporate. We provide them lots of different educational services. We organise the big conference for the digital youth forum. It will be the 10th one. We incorporate a lot with the youth programme. Now we've started the total new shelters which we call the cyber spots. This is the building like the school teams focus on the issues. We try to build the teams that can be invited by school properties, for example, to work on policies. These are the kids with the biggest problem. We started and have 200 schools. It is fantastic. We have a meeting with them. We had 1,000 people learning how to count those digital leaders. The presentation and the materials, we invite all of you to contact us if you would like to learn more. Thank you very much.
SABRINA: Thank you very much, Anna. These were just two country examples. Poland and Belgium. Of course, as we all know, these are global issues that we have to work together. We heard a couple of times that it is not important to involve people in to the conversation
(Inaudible conversation in Zoom).
SABRINA: We have the youth with us. They have been supporting us from over ten years now. Starting the first time working with the Portuguese Internet Center. He's also part of the youth IGF. I think it is very important that you are always connecting with us today to hear the perspective on the young people and why it is so important to have services like safer Internet centers to have a national helpline in how we can also encourage children and young people to contact those services and to have a conversation, to share with us what they experience online and how can we help them? Joao, you hope you can hear us. I give you the floor now.
JOAO: Yes. Can I confirm in the room the sound is okay?
SABRINA: Yes. We can hear you.
JOAO: Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, everyone that's is joining on the discussion today. Thanks for the presentation. I'm one of the Better Internet for Kids ambassador. The idea is to provide awareness and be the bridge providing the awareness session to the wider Better Internet for Kids Network that collaborates with online platforms and decision makers to include the feedback from a youth perspective. Regarding the appliances and bringing it to the context. In this case, it is run by the victim's support association for Portugal. It plays a crucial role providing these services. It is actually a link between their expertise, let's say that offline cases and the online support that is not providing for young people. I think it is important to reflect on a couple of things. Helplines are beneficial. What we see in terms of interaction with young people. It is that they are getting the right support to the claims. It is digital rights and online practices; helplines are helping bridge the gap. And I think it is also a tool to provide access to further help. Either a young person or an educator that seeks helpline such as the Portuguese one have at least an opportunity to get the proper recommendation of whose activity or institution should they go further to tackle a certain problem? Of course, it is not everything is perfect. If we are seeing the helpline use is increasing, you also have to ensure that it is wild spread enough. If they are having good results, it means that we should provide the tool or bring awareness of that tool to more and more young people. And I think that when it comes to the awareness challenges to such helpline services, there are a few. There are indeed a little bit of barriers to access in terms that some young people may face stigma and not sure how to reach the services. The solution has to come from a perspective of enhancing visibility through schools through the youth programme, social media, and it is in this step that I see the most effort being made. Especially around dates like the typical helpline number is provided and disseminated widely across the broader, safer Internet campaigns. That part I think it is very important. From a youth perspective, it is interesting to see that the confidentiality and trust is something that's very tangible, very thin, and it is sometimes hard to reach concept. Providing the anonymity while maintaining the reporting obligations of helpline are typically the challenges that someone writing those services might face. The scope the strengthening the accessibility and future directions is becoming ever more interesting. They are saying what should be done on this part. It is ongoing discussion. It is representing the services under the trusted DSA. It will be possibly an interesting way of entering to the illegal reporting such as the hate speech. Something that's relevant, including the youth. It helps for the helpline quality. Whenever there's an example. It bridges all of the impacts from the know-how for the association for the victims outside that's basically my contribution. They have accessibility and forms of the contact that's shown in the previous slide.
SABRINA: Thank you for your intervention. It is important to have the voices represented specifically for us in the IGF. Here on the slide you can see and connect with the Safer Internet Center in your country. This is a European Internet; safer Internet day is an international data to celebrate every year on the second Tuesday. We are also very happy to exchange with you how you can set up a safer Internet in your country and how can you establish the operational infrastructure of helplines and hotlines? We have great expertise there. We are coming to the end of the session. We are represented in the village throughout the week we are happy to share more best practices and more information with you. At the European level, we're working on the better Internet for kids. It is the European level that emphasises and is built on three pillars. It is about youth protection and youth empowerment. This is something that we're trying to incorporate at the very integral level, trying to have voices of young people in all of our actions. So this just invites me to also visit us online, Better Internet for Kids dot Europe dot EU. We have provide multiple language resources. We heard how vital it is to not only educate young children, but the adults for the inclusive online behavior. I don't think we have too much time for questions. As I said, please do some by and visit us at the booth. Thank you very much for joining our session today. We wish you a nice evening.
NIELS: We have five minutes. If anyone would like to ask a question.
AUDIENCE: The photos and also last year we celebrates the identity. We know it is 13 to 19. Our helpline number is 13 and 19. It is easy to remember. It is the toll free national help number. Empowered by the young people. My three members are joining this evening. We would like to motivate with you. And ask and also validation. We have a web site. We will launch the platform balance. Thank you so much. We will work together for the betterment of the teenager and children. Thank you.
NIELS: I'm very sure about that. Thank you. More questions? In this case, thanks a lot. Bye.