Safer Internet Day: a look at the French Safer Internet Centre

As we spend more time online either for personal or professional reasons, we need to be equipped with skills and knowledge on how to navigate online safely and confidently. Notably, online safety skills have become essential to ensure the best experiences online for children, young people and adults alike.

Safer Internet Day, celebrated globally in February every year, aims to promote a safe and positive use of digital technologies by children and young people, and to raise awareness on online safety.

The Insafe network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs) celebrates Safer Internet Day by organising national events and campaigns, and by promoting the services and resources they offer. This is the case of the French Safer Internet Centre that launched its new resource: FamiNum.

• This platform offers digital guidance to parents; each family creates their own personalised digital charter for screens at home, according to their profiles and priorities. The first step is to fill a questionnaire. Based on the information provided – such as family members, age range and specific rules that apply to each of them – the platform generates a selection of best practices to choose from that can help families manage time spent on screen and support children in their digital life.
• The new FamiNum video series provides two-minutes answers to parents’ practical questions about their children’s digital life, such as “How to manage screen time?” or “How to help your teenager disconnect at night?”.

In addition, the French Safer Internet Centre provides the following services:

1. The InternetSansCrainte awareness raising centre: addresses youth, parents, educators and teachers, to educate them about a better and safer use of the internet. It also offers awareness toolkits and services deployed in cooperation with third parties, such as schools, industry and relevant national stakeholders.
2. The 3018 e-Enfance helpline service: provides support to young people and their parents regarding harmful contact, offensive conduct (e.g. cyberbullying, hate speech, sexting) and undesirable or harmful content.
3. The PointdeContact hotline: available for receiving and managing reports from the public related to online content, including child sexual abuse material that is suspected to be illegal. The hotline assesses the report and, if found to be manifestly illegal, the report will be forwarded to the French Law Enforcement Agency and to the relevant hosting provider, in order to obtain removal from the Internet.

Meet the project coordinator of the French Safer Internet Centre Deborah Elalouf and learn about her work in the following videos:

• Safer Internet France 2022 - #SID2022 (EN)
• Safer Internet France 2022 - #SID2022 (FR)

For more information on FamiNum check the press release (in French).

Background Info

The Digital Europe Programme (DEP) will build on and continue to support the work of SICs which has already been carried out under Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Telecom Programme between 2015 and 2021. DEP aims to build the strategic digital capacities of the EU and to facilitate the wide deployment of digital technologies. With an overall budget of €7.5 billion, out of which €0.8 billion is managed by HaDEA, the programme will support investments in the following sectors:

• High Performance Computing
• Cloud, data and Artificial Intelligence
• Cybersecurity
• Advanced Digital Skills
• Accelerating best use of technologies

HaDEA manages actions under Cloud, data and Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Digital Skills and Accelerating best use of technologies.

Useful Links

• DEP work programmes adoption
• First calls for proposals under DEP 2021-2022 (deadline 22 February)