Maintaining a Safer Online World for Children and Young Adults in Libraries

A new report from IFLA was just published: Creating and Maintaining a Safer Online World for Children and Young Adults in Libraries: A Report on the 2021 Safer Internet Day Baseline Survey for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
"This report provides the results of a baseline survey of safe internet practices in libraries for children and young adults around the world. This survey was created by members of IFLA’s Libraries for Children and Young Adults (C&YA) Section, with the goal of finding out: What would help librarians create and maintain a safer online world for children and young people?" The carried out a survey of librarians, with 482 responses. Most respondents were putting " significant effort into educating children and young adults on how to use the internet safely" and examples of how they are doing that are given, as well as the issues that librarians face.
"A key message for decision makers, resource allocators and policy makers is that as librarians provide a point of intervention with children and young adults there is a need for continuing professional development and training opportunities, some of which could be sourced via IFLA and the wider library community, perhaps in partnership with the SID [Safer Internet Day] organisation. Another theme was about resources, which also extended to organisational issues in the work environment including calls for better software and good network connections. There was a perceived need for international guidelines and policy support from national library associations" Go to https://repository.ifla.org/bitstream/123456789/2537/1/ifla-professional-report-138-en.pdf

Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety (CRIS)

Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety (CRIS) is an initiative from Education Scotland. They have produced some videos and other resources, and are running some challenges for Scottish children to do with cyber security and staying safe online. Go to https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/digilearn/remote/cyber-resilience-and-internet-safety/

Do you have initiatives/ resources on online safety for UK citizens? Landscape Mapping Exercise - open til Friday 17 January

There is a UK Government survey (also linked below), which is only open until Friday. It aims "to map media literacy initiatives currently underway, which are focused on online safety and minimising harm, and are available for users in the UK". Although it mentions MEDIA literacy, if you have an information literacy initiative that actually serves the same purpose, it would be good to have it included. It DOES ask for a lot of detail about initiatives including funding, takeup and any evaluation.

The way it is written makes it easiest to fill in if you had a limited term project aiming at a specific group (in my view). However, for example, if you are in a public library which does training and support of people needed advice on this, or (say) an NHS, school or university library which has an outreach programme or has created an open-access digital resource that could train or advise people on this topic (video, tutorial etc.), then I think those would qualify.

I didn't follow the questionnaire all the way through, but their list of "what is provided" consists of:
-Training - of teachers, support workers, service providers etc
- Research – on any aspect of media literacy...
- Networking Platforms – conferences, seminars, meetings, online and offline forums, newsletters and databases.
- Campaign – awareness-raising with a desired behaviour change...
- Policy Development – major consultations, published reports and recommendations
- Provision of Funding – for media literacy activities delivered by third parties...
- End-user engagement – grass-roots projects that provide support and information to end-users via face-to-face, phone or online contact.
- Provision of resources – information leaflets, video, audio, lesson plans, curriculum modules, websites etc. (my emphasis)

Also the list of "skills or capabilities" that are aimed for is as follows (overlapping with IL, in my view)
- Media use: Ability to search, find and navigate and use media content and services safely
- Critical thinking 1: Understanding how the media industry works and how media messages are constructed
- Critical thinking 2: Questioning the motivations of content producers in order to make informed choices about content selection and use
- Critical thinking 3: Recognising different types of media content and evaluating content for truthfulness, reliability and value for money
- Critical thinking 4: Recognising and managing online security/safety risks
- Creative skills: creating building and generating media content
- Participation and engagement 1: interaction, engagement and participation in the economic, social and cultural aspects of society through the media
- Participation and engagement 2: promoting democratic participation and fundamental rights
Intercultural dialogue: including challenging radicalisation and hate speech

The press release said "The UK Government committed to developing an online media literacy strategy in the Online Harms White Paper, published in April 2019. As part of this the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport have appointed a consultancy, RSM UK, to undertake a comprehensive mapping exercise to identify what actions are already underway. The consultancy has developed a framework to record and characterise the media literacy initiatives available to UK users and is in the process of populating this framework to help DCMS understand the nature of the initiatives and any gaps in provision.
"If you represent an organisation that provides or funds any media literacy initiatives to users in the UK, it would be very helpful if you could complete this brief survey."

This is the link to the online questionnaire, which asks "some questions about the issues that you are trying to resolve, your target user groups, and delivery methods." https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/MediaLiteracy
Contacts for questions are matt.rooke@rsmuk.com and amy.hau@rsmuk.com.

If you are interested in digital literacy mapping, you may also be interested in the report on Mapping Digital Literacy Policy and Practice in the Canadian Education Landscape (from MediaSmarts) and the 2016 report on media literacy in 28 European Union countries Mapping of media literacy practices and actions in EU-28 (though it is not very comprehensive, at least for the UK).
Photo by Sheila Webber: rainbow, Lewes, January 2020

From digiducks to Penguin Pigs: using stories as a creative methodological approach with research involving young children #lilac19

This is Pam McKinney live-blogging from the LILAC conference. Lindsay Watson a senior lecturer in early years education from university of Huddersfield (@Lje1994) is presenting her doctoral research into storytelling as a research method with young children. It’s impossible to interview or survey young children, so you need a more fun and creative way to find out what they think. Online safety for children is a key issue, as children engage younger and younger and for longer amounts of time with devices such as iPads that are internet enabled. We have moved away from restricting access towards positively influencing children’s engagement, and recognise them as keen and able users. So we need to research children’s understanding of the internet, and this involves doing research WITH rather than ON children and to become co-constructors of knowledge.

The overall aim of the PhD research was to examine how to tackle issues of online child safety, and to analyse child oriented creative research practices such as storytelling in eliciting the views of younger children within research, and to look at issues of consent, assent and dissent and how children make choices in the research space.

Children are familiar with storytelling and it capitalises their desire to interact and connect with the content. It can encourage younger children’s voices, and is a much more relaxed experience for them. Nine children aged 4-5 took part in the research, who were based in one primary school in the UK. The children were read a wide range of age appropriate story books about online safety, following important dilemmas. Children were free to express their opinions and perceptions. Sessions  lasted 15-30 minutes and had between 1 and 9 children taking part.

In the next part of the session delegates were invited to read a selection of books and note down their thoughts on the style, story and how suitable we thought the books would be for young children. We thought some of the books were quite unsuitable for the age group, and contained ideas and metaphors that might not be appropriate. Some books present a negative view of children and their engagement with technology, but some were really successful at stimulating conversation with children about topics such as online safety and privacy. Some books covered activities that were a little advanced for 4-5 year olds but were useful for preparing children for activities they would do when a little bit older.

Initial findings reveal that storytelling is a great way to engage children, but the researcher has control about the choice of book and can guide the interactions.

Online Harms #infolit

The UK Government has published a White Paper on Online Harms. As is implied by the title, the focus is on how the UK can become "the safest place in the world to go online" but also "the best place to start and grow a digital business". New regulatory measures are proposed, and one of the (smaller) sections concerns citizens' media literacy: "The government will develop a new online media literacy strategy. This will be developed in broad consultation with stakeholders, including major digital, broadcast and news media organisations, the education sector, researchers and civil society. This strategy will ensure a coordinated and strategic approach to online media literacy education and awareness for children, young people and adults."
There is an open consultation until 1 July 2019, which is an opportunity to (amongst other things) identify how researchers and LIS practitioners could be involved in the media literacy strategy (as otherwise it is likely the focus will be on media and communication resaerchers and consultants) https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-white-paper
Stéphane Goldstein has provided a useful reflection on the white paper at https://www.informall.org.uk/blog/media-literacy-strategy/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Greenwich park, April 2019

UK major report: Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes

There are some new reports from Ofcom (the UK "watchdog" for the communications sector). The main report, published today, is a substantial 200 page document, and the other 2 reports which I'll mention supplement that one.
Ofcom (2012) Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report Research Document. Ofcom. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/main.pdf
The report is "designed to give an accessible overview of media literacy among [British] children and young people aged 5-15 and their parents/carers, as well as an indicative view of media use by children aged 3-4." Key research was 1,717 in-home interviews.
The report is packed with statistics about what kinds of device children access, and where they do so. 91% of children have internet access at home (for the first time, this is not an increase compared with the last report) - some children still do not access the internet anywhere. Unsurprisingly, mobile devices feature heavily, with gender differences in how the devices are used. Also, just picking up on a personal interest, in 8-11 year olds the only "creative or civic" activity that has gone up every year is creating an avatar in an online world (this year 48% had).
For some of the conclusions, I will be lazy and copy from the Executive summary.
" Children are using a wide range of media devices, and internet access is not confined to the desktop PC, laptop or netbook. Those aged 12-15 in particular are spending more time online, are more likely to go online using their mobile phone and are more likely to say that their mobile phone is the device they would miss the most.

"For the first time this report contains indicative data on the media habits of 3-4 year olds. This indicates that many in this age group are using a range of different media devices, including over a third who are going online using a desktop PC, laptop or netbook and 6% who are going online via a tablet computer.
"These trends have implications for how we consider children’s media literacy, as the requirement for media literacy skills begins at a young age, and the types of devices children need to be proficient on, and the opportunities for them to encounter media content, increase.
"Children, particularly 12-15s, are prolific social networkers with large numbers of friends – an average of 92 friends for 8-11s and 286 for 12-15s. This has implications for how children protect and share personal information, given that personal data available to “friends” on social networking sites is likely to be shared with large numbers of people."

2. Ofcom (2012) Websites visited by children: Nielsen analysis. Ofcom. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/Annex_3.pdf

The data is "derived from Nielsen's UK panel of households, comprising 45,239 individuals". This is short, but interesting in listing top 25/50 sites for 3 age groups. As with the other reports, data was gathered in 2012.
- 5-7 years old: top ten (1 to 10): Google, Google Search, BBC, Facebook, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing, YouTube, BBC CBeebies, Yahoo!, eBay, Ask Search Network
- 8-11 years: top ten (1 to 10): Google, Google Search, YouTube, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing, Facebook, BBC, YouTube Homepage, Google Image search, Wikipedia, Windows Live Messenger
- 12-15 years: top ten (1 to 10): Google, Google Search, Facebook, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing ,YouTube,Google Image Search, YouTube Homepage, Yahoo!, Wikipedia

3. Jigsaw Research (2012) Parents’ views on parental controls: Findings of qualitative research. Ofcom. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/Annex_1.pdf

The research used a purposive sample of parents (in the UK), with qualitative methods including focus groups and journaling (it gives details of the questions etc., useful for other researchers). Parents were more concerned about issues like cyberbullying and "grooming" and the impact of internet use on other parts of the child's life (e.g. exercise, writing), rather than issues to do with access to inappropriate content (partly because they didn't perceive it as a particular problem). Some quotes from the executive summary are:
"Overall, ensuring balanced and safe use of the internet was seen as an important parenting challenge, but one where parents were not always clear on how to get it right. This was because they could not necessarily draw on their own experiences growing up, and also because they felt that the issues and risks were constantly developing and shifting".
"Overall, technical controls were viewed as a supplement to, rather than replacement for, hands-on parenting. Supervision and other forms of parental mediation were felt still to be needed to prevent all of the day-to-day issues as well as risks emanating from children’s internet usage."
Photos by Sheila Webber: Autumn chrysanthemum blooms, October 2012

EU kids online & release of study on parents & internet

Whilst looking at the previous site (Safer Internet Day), I also found the EU Kids Online site http://www.eukidsonline.net/ (a project based at the London School of Economics), which includes a lot of interest. There is a press release giving a summary of findings from a report released today about the extent to which parents in different European countries worry about and monitor/control children's use of online.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/
EUKidsOnline/SID09EUKidsOnlineWeb.pdf

Other resources include a searchable database of research, and a report published last year:
Hasebrink, U., Livingstone, S., Haddon, L. (2008) Comparing children’s online opportunities and risks across Europe: Cross-national comparisons for EU Kids Online. London: EU Kids Online (Deliverable D3.2). http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/
EUKidsOnline/Reports/D3.2_ISBN.pdf
I haven't had time to look at it properly but it seems to have a good summary and analysis of the risks and benefits, as well as statistical comparisons.

Photo by Sheila Webber: it's tiring being a snowman, Western Park, Feb 2009

Safer Internet Day

Today is Safer Internet Day. There is information on the day at http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/
en/pub/insafe/index.htm , organised by Insafethe European internet safety network with support from the European Union. The event concentrates on two themes: social networking and cyberbullying. Apparently native-language versions of a TV ad warning against cyber-bullying will be shown in European countries and there are associated events. If you click on Library at the top of the page there is a database of links to resources on the topic. There are also are pages of resources to download, including some cyber-safety quizzes and brochures including "what would you do in this situation" scenarios. I didn't look at all the material, but most of these items were not available in English yet, but were in other languages (e.g. German, French, Greek).
They also advertise a safer internet "fair" taking place online 10-24 February at http://www.sidfair.org/sinfer/index.html. I think this is one of those events where people are still frantically putting up the exhibition booths as the first visitors stream into the hall (e.g. if you select United Kingdom as your country, the news consists of "test to link"). Thus today all I could see was a film in another European language and the start of a news story about mobile phones. I am sure more will follow.