As all of us know, children security on the internet is a problematic issue. Yet an important one. it is constantly triggering a lot of discussions in pretty much all the countries and even in the European Parliament. So far we could have seen many projects in the past, that were more or less successfull -Â for example the infamous "Red button" plugin for internet browsers in the Czech Republic, or other programs that are supposed to protect children from many evil things on the internet.Â
In order to adress this issue more effectively, Amelia decided to make a written declaration on this topic. A simple text, that ask ICANN, organization currently preparing the creation of .kids domain, to make it governed and controlled by children-friendly organizations and community as well as the children themselves. Thus a possible negative influence of commercial interests from many sides constantly penetrating the Internet can be avoided. The only interest that has to be followed when it comes to .kids domain should be the interest of the children. It should not be the interest of big companies, having means to seduce children to whatever they see as a priority.
In order to debate about the issue of safer Internet and future of Internet for kids, we organized a breakfast meeting with representative of the children as well as with the children themselves. Supporters of our declaration (Maria Da Graça Carvalho, Tanja Fajon, Iliana Malinova Iotova, Sean Kelly, Petru Constantin Luhan, Cristiana Muscardini, Angelika Werthmann, Ivo Vajgl, Milan Zver and Amelia) met and talked with them. It was interesting to hear what children think about Internet; how for example bullying changed during several last years or even decades with the arrival of information technologies to pretty much every area of our everyday life.Â
Children nowadays use lot of services on the Internet that are originally designed for adults. For example in Germany a special search engine, that is designed for children is available However, the majority of children ignore it, as Google - the universal search engine of our times - became literally the verb for searching on the web. And many other examples can follow.
I must say, that the whole preparation of our breakfast meeting was only possible thanks to Yannis Li, a wonderful person from DotKids Foundation. Her kindess and assistance to the work we were doing was exactly what was needed in order to have our meeting running the way it was supposed to run and the support of various members of the European Parliament available.Â
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".. children security on the internet is a problematic issue"
No it is not. That phrase is just one of those repeated so many times that people start taking it as a fact. Old grown ups have problems with the internet, usually not children, and they are projecting their fears on the young ones since this is effective rethoric against other adults, noting else. To everyone seeing these problems, usually based on moral, i can only say - now i know what you are looking on at on the web in the dark hours of night when no one is whatching.
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