Early development of Digital and media literacy is necessary for prevention of the risks for children and young people in digital environment, according to the young people who participated in the Youth forum Voice It, organised by the National Network for Children.
For the third year running, the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre has been training students aged 12 and 13 across the country to advise and help their peers who have faced a risk or an incident on the internet and also how to raise awareness about internet safety among other children. 242 Cyberscouts were trained in 2017 in 12 towns in Bulgaria: Pazardzhik, Sofia, Oryahovo, Dalgopol, Svishtov, Rakovski, Radomir, Belozem, Chalakovo, Plovdiv, Kyusetndil and Elena.
A new study on young children (0-8) and digital technology was conducted by Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre, as part of a European-wide study, coordinated by European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. A fieldwork was conducted between November 2016 and January 2017. The current research is a continuation of a 2015 study about how children aged 8 years or less and their families use and manage digital technologies. The result of that study was a valuable new knowledge that partially filled a considerable gap in the existing scholarship, which has previously largely neglected how the youngest children cope in the digital world.
At a press conference on July 31, video blogging competition for children aged 6 to16 was announced. The International Vlog Contest, organized by Cartoon Network's children's TV channel and supported by the Bulgarian Safer Internet Center, aims to encourage children to develop and demonstrate their video blogging skills.
A conference on early childhood development of digital and media literacy took place on 30th of May in Sofia. The conference was organized by the Applied Research and Communications Fund (ARC Fund), coordinator of Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre.
Bulgarian young people asked Julie de Bailliencourt, Safety Policy Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Facebook, to collect less personal data from users. Teenagers also proposed that the team of Facebook, the most popular social media in Bulgaria, think about minimizing offers for friends’ search.
The international Safer Internet Day was celebrated on February 7, 2017 in over 100 countries in all continents. The Bulgarian main event with the slogan “Ot Teb Z@visi” (trans. Be The Change) took place in the child science center Muzeiko in Sofia.
In 2016, experts from the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre visited six different Bulgarian towns where they trained six new Cyberscout teams comprising more than 150 pupils. These teams will enter a competition among each other for the organization of the most useful and original activity, related to online safety, which is to be carried out in front of other children and teenagers in their hometown.
