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.
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>> MODERATOR: Hello, everyone. We are about ready to start here. We will give it one more minute. One of our speakers is running late. So, we will wait for her and then we can get started very quickly.
In the meantime, if I can ask all of the speakers to turn on their cameras and so the audience can see you. Thank you.
(Silence)
>> MODERATOR: In the interest of time, since we only have an hour, I propose we start. Thank you, everyone, for joining this workshop (?) this is what --
(Audio difficulty)
>> MODERATOR: Convened by the International Chamber of Commerce. This is to support the Information Society, ICC Basis.
And this is the last day of this forum, so you can see that thin crowd (muffled audio).
>> MODERATOR: Different route this week mentioned is how we are talking about providing opportunities in economic or social terms or talking about education or talking about drawing economy, even if we are talking about some of the challenges and trends, everything started with connectivity, everything starts about being online and making sure when you are online, that you find services, the content, the information that you need to support your wanting to go online and in addition to that, you need the right skills in the right capacity to be able to understand what you receive online. And then (?) (muffled audio) new opportunities.
(Audio difficulty)
>> MODERATOR: But we need to be careful about or need to be mindful about is connectivity is not a one-size-fits-all issue. We cannot do it one way for everyone. There are common elements. But we need to be mindful of the audience, who is it that we are trying to bring online, what is the context in which we are bringing them online. And this is especially true when we are talking about children and kids. Children and young people requires a lot (muffled audio) connectivity. The internet has many opportunities for communication, activity and entertainment. It also brings out certain brings to vulnerabilities such as children.
Ensure safe and trust worthy environment for them, engage with technologies and spending time online, developing such an environment requires, obviously, a lot of cooperation to foster (muffled audio) regulatory violates responsible practices by all stakeholders as well as ensure capacity building and skills development.
So, in this workshop in the next how, we will discuss these elements, building a safe and trust worthy online environment for children and the responsibilities of the various stakeholder groups in fostering such an environment.
It's going to be a fairly easy job for me as a Moderator because I have the same question to all of my four lovely panelists who are joining in today. And they are all experts in their own fields from their own stakeholder groups in this issue.
So alphabetical order, I have Ms. Rachel Cooper at UNICEF and delivering a video statement to start off our conversation.
I also have Francesca Gottschalk, who is a policy analyst at OECD.
Ms. Thoko Miya, who is Project Manager for Girlhype Coders Academy, joining us onsite shortly.
I have Mr. Simon Morrison, Senior Policy Manager at Amazon and (muffled audio).
I will ask this panel from your perspective, from your work, what is it that you feel is the most important element on (muffled audio) safe and interest way and share with us any positive or negative examples and highlight the challenges and opportunities that you see in this.
To start us off, I will join to Simon, Simon also has a little video, I think, that you want to share with us to start off your comments. So, over to you. And curious to see what you have to share with us.
Since my sharing isn't enabled yet, we will have to enable the sharing feature so they can show the video. One second while they help us on site.
>> SIMON MORRISON: Sure.
>> MODERATOR: We don't have the audible enabled for this. We don't have the audio (muffled audio).
(Audio difficulty)
(Audio feedback)
>> SIMON MORRISON: In the interest of time, I would be happy to go directly into my remarks. But I would encourage interested people to go to Amazon's family digital well-being hub online, which is a compendium of all of our tools for families and comprises our thoughts about developing safe communities, safe family environments online.
I will make a few points, in addition to what's included in the video. And good morning, everyone, or good afternoon, good day, as it may be where you are.
So, as you see in that video, you know, our goal at Amazon is to help parents protect their children online, while giving children the freedom to explore, discover and play, using our devices and services.
That framing is intentional because we think there is often opportunity online for children and families that is best accessed within reasonable guardrails. To make this possible, we launched a service called Amazon Kids, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. That service helps parents manage the way their children interact with technology, including by limiting screen time, but with many other features and I will describe a few elements how Amazon Kids think about what we call trust by design.
So, there are four elements I will walk through. The first is choices for adults. So, we offer easy-to-use tools that tailor digital experiences aligned to individual parenting styles, including your decisions about screen time, about the content your children see, and the feature that they can access on their own.
Two, freedom for children, as I have skated previously. We believe that the benefits of independent exploration, discovery and play always within safe boundaries are incredibly important. Through Amazon Kids and through our services, children can access a library of thousands of videos, books, games, and apps, prefilled for their maturity level by their parents or guardians. And parents can control their usage in an ongoing way.
Third, I will talk about curation. So, we provide kid appropriate content experiences through curated and filtered services. So, for example, our subscription media service, Amazon Kids Plus, has entirely hand selected content, which parents are then able to curate further, but the corpus itself is already prescreened and filtered.
And then finally, private and security. Amazon's devices, services and controls are designed with multiple players of privacy and security at their core. So you can control -- you have control over your family's experience on devices in apps and in browser, in interactions with Alexa, and you have control over your family's privacy and data collection and use on these services.
Finally, while we are very thoughtful about how we design these products and we design them with families' needs in mind, we are aware that we don't have all of the expertise as a private company. So, we rely on experts in the space. We work closely with groups like Family Online Safety Institute, FOSI, the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, and other groups to leverage the breadth of expertise out there as we build these offerings, and we welcome inputs and guidance from the broader community.
I look forward to today's discussion. Thanks for having us.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Simon. And thank you for these interventions. Apologize for the small technical glitch. We will try and (?) as a closing remarks to try and see your video again and let's see if in fact we have a double screen now. (muffled audio).
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Can you hear me? Yes? Okay. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you for this invitation. I'm very happy to be here and to have the opportunity to share with you the reality of (?) in Latin American, one of the most poorest regions in the world. An organization, Chicos. has been working 25 years, so --
>> MODERATOR: Can I stop you for a second? We were trying to get a video (muffled audio) seems to be some sort of element. We didn't hear what you were saying because we were trying to play the video.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: I'm sorry. The audio, I cannot understand. Excuse me.
>> MODERATOR: Can you hear me? Help us with the audio (muffled audio) please. Can you hear me now, Mariela.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Excuse me. Can you say it again? My audio is -- maybe I can --
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: No, Mariela. We are having issues here. We can't, actually, hear you properly in the room.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Do you think it's my problem or --
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: No. I think it's a problem in the room.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Oh, okay. Thank you.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Mariela, can you hear me now?
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Yes.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Sorry. We are having some issues with the audio here in the room. I apologize for the glitches. But (muffled audio).
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Okay.
>> MODERATOR: Start your intervention again because we could not hear you when you were speaking. Please go ahead and start jury intervention. Sorry.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Okay. So, thank you for the invitation. I am happy to be here. And I am very happy to share with you, to have the opportunity to share with you the reality of children in Latin America. One of the most unequal regions in the world.
Our organization, Chicos.net, has been working for 25 years to improve the well-being of children in the connective society. We have witnessed the huge impact of digital technologies on children rights. As digitalization grows, many children remain excluded from opportunities to learn and develop.
So, the main issue we have to focus on today is meaningful and also equitable access to digital media. And why -- I'm sorry.
Why is the question so important and complex in Latin America? We all know that there are still children that are totally offline and this is a big challenge. But the biggest and more gap is the reference between those who have the skill to use and take advantage of digital media and those who do not and then remain behind.
Even if 100% of children were connected, the social digital divide would persist because it is related to inequities that exist outside and before the digital world.
If children cannot read or they cannot understand what they read, if children cannot solve a problem or a lot of them don't have enough communicative skill, then we have to think, well, how we bring technology to them and what for.
I will show you now. I will show you now a project we have designed to work with the Disney company and taking this reality into account.
>> Is a digit platform that offers boys and girls age 3 through 11 the chance to create their own stories on digital media. By combining the art of storytelling with digital resources in the maker culture, it fosters the acquisition of the skills of the 21st Century, both at a social and emotional level. And in terms of literacy. Leveraging the opportunities brought on by technology. The platform is organized in three core stages: Explore, create, and tell.
Explore offers an original fiction mini series aimed at inspiring and introducing the art of storytelling. Create offers an interactive platform that walks the kids through the process of writing their stories.
Tell invites the children to turn those stories into video games, sound stories, animations, short films, comics and more.
Since it began, it has achieved outstanding results. Over 200,000 unique users in the website. Over 100,000 stories created through the platform. Over 29,000 teachers benefited directly. Over 800,000 children are already part of Historia Para Amar.
(non-English language)
>> MARIELA REIMAN: This lady, she in an indifference community in Colombia. The design, that means in Spanish stories to make or stories to assemble, includes at least six key strategies that cannot be missed if we want to generate meaningful and inclusive project. First of all, focuses on the 21st Century skills in a holistic way. The project is not about technology, but about creativity, expression, problem solving, collaboration, learning. Digital technologies are the tool. The project is about literacy in its widest sense. Today literacy means reading, writing and applying digital languages.
Second, the importance of active learning to promote smart and creative youth, Para Amar, is based on learning-by-doing model, by exploring, creating, playing with digital media. We don't want children growing up thinking that devices and internet are for watching and listening. We want children to become creator, to think and express themselves, to be active and not passive consumers.
Another issue is adult empowerment for a sound digital education. A central strategy is the diversity perspective. We must remember that not two communities are alike. So, we have to design solutions taking in account different contexts, culture, previous experiences for access to devices and wi-fi.
Another key point is the huge value of multisector partnerships between private sector, government, to achieve commitment, scalability and sustainability. I invite you to access the website and create your own story while learning Spanish.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Mariela. This is a really interesting deep dive into the situation in Latin America. And from there, I think we are going to jump over to Europe and hear (?) space and share a more intervention perspective from OECD and how they can add children in environment, what policy regulations they have and also how they (muffled audio) on some of these issues. Please, Francesca, over to you.
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: Thank you, Timea. I'm going to share my screen and hopefully this will work.
>> MODERATOR: Yes.
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: Great. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: There we go. It's a little bit lag here in the room. Thank you.
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: There is a lag. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. I'm joining you from a quite cold Paris today. Very gray as well. My name is Francesca Gottschalk. And I work in the Center for Educational Research and Innovation at the OECD. I am happy to be here to share some insights from some of our work around the OECD house on digital risks and digital skills.
Without further ado, the science, technology and innovation directorate at the OECD in 2021 published their revised typology of risks. This follows of course this framework. The first time of digital risk they have identified is content risks. This is where the child is the recipient of harmful, hateful or illegal digital could not. Pornographic, racist, hateful or illegal content, advertising in spam or misleading information like fake use.
Conduct risks are where the child is the actor in a peer-to-peer exchange. Hacking, cyber bullying their peers or creating and sharing harmful content such as pornography.
Consumer risks are where the child is an active participant in the digital market. So this could be exposure to things like inappropriate, illegal or unidentified marketing, financial risks such as digital fraud or security risks like scams, identity theft or malicious code.
And finally, we have contact risks. So, this is where the child is the victim or the participant in an interactive encounter. This could be being bullied, being stalked, things like sextortion, sexual trafficking, grooming.
Across these four Cs we have cross-cutting risks which encompass privacy risks, advanced technology risks, associated with things like AI or new emerging technologies, and also risks to health and well-being.
I'd like to say here that it's really important that we understand that risks do not equal harm necessarily. So, there are some risks that can cause harm to children. But this depends on a number of factors, including the children's digital skills.
So, the goal in many -- well in all OECD countries and countries around the world really is nowadays to create digit environments where children can safely learn, play and explore. This kind of echoes what Simon said as well.
So, we know in many systems we have a number of different ways in which we handle different digital risks, inside and outside of education. This can be providing information through resources and campaigns, thinking through ways in way we can support children outside of school, such as reporting mechanisms for cyber bullying or exposure to illegal content. There are also frameworks, policies and legal avenues in which we can deal with different digital risks.
Many school systems use things like safe log-ins, single sign-ons and secure content and filters in schools. And a number of systems use integrated approaches where they take various approaches included in this list. And what I'd like to focus on in the next couple of minutes is thinking about the digital skills of students and teachers and thinking about partnerships with digital experts and other third sector actors.
Quickly, I'd like to talk about the myth of the digital native. If I was there in the room with you, I would ask you to raise your hands if you have heard of kids being talked about as digital natives because I think we have all heard this. Thank you, Timea, Simon.
And I'd like to just say that this is a really important myth that we should be busting. Because young people cannot be understood as a homogenous group. And their digital activities vary based on a number of factors. What Mariela was saying about unequal access, also their digital skills. This will affect how children engage in the digital environment.
So, this data is from EU kids online, the 2020 survey from 19 countries and we see across the board that most children do things like watching video clips, listen to music online daily. Whereas when we look at the top, things like looking for news online or browsing for things to buy or see what things cost, children engage in these kinds of activities much less than some other online activities. And often this is also associated with things like socioeconomic status.
When we look at data from PISA, this is from the latest PISA -- the Programme for International Student Assessment that the OECD conducts every three years. This is from 2018. And we see that students' knowledge of reading strategies for assessing the credibility of sources varies a lot across participating countries and economies. In this task you can specifically were asked which strategies would be appropriate for responding to a spam email, which is something that I think many of us are exposed to multiple times per day. I can say that for me personally, anyway.
Then when we lack at the difference in the ability to find an appropriate way of responding to spam emails, when we look at the difference between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students we see in every participating country and economy there is a huge gap where socioeconomically advantaged students outperform their disadvantaged peers. And I think this really hits home the idea that children are not digital natives. They do not inherently have the skills needed to navigate the digital environment safety and effectively and education systems have a huge task ahead of them thinking about how we can equip all children with the skills that they need to safely and effectively navigate the digital environment to minimize harms and also to maximize opportunities and benefits.
So, in 2018 in the 21st Century Children Project, we asked education systems, which digital skills are you teaching? And at which levels of education? We had 26 responses to this survey. And we see in early childhood and preprimary education, digital skills at that time, this was a few years ago now, were not widely established across the curriculum. And we know that children are accessing the digital environment from earlier and earlier ages and also by themselves.
So, having these skills such as operational skills, being able to use a computer, a tablet, being able to communicate effectively online, these are really important skills to develop from the earliest ages.
And now when we see at primary and secondary levels we see across the board that generally in most systems these skills are focused on. But really the emphasis is more in secondary level of education than for younger children in the primary level.
And in order to teach these skills to students, teachers really need the ICT skills. They need the technology skills themselves in order to effectively incorporate digital tools into the teaching and learning, and also teach children about digital tools. So, this is data from TALIS, which is the Teaching and Learning International Survey, and we see that the percentage of teachers who report that they have received ICT skills for teaching in their teacher training both at the initial and continuing professional development levels is quite high. But then we also see this is the second highest level of reported need in terms of professional development.
So, what are we missing here? Teachers are receiving a lot of training in this area, but do they need more? And also, do we need to think more about the quality of the training that they are receiving?
And lastly, the point that I'd like to finish on, is that education cannot do it alone. We know that partnering with digitally savvy experts to implement programmes, for example, on dealing with cyber bullying, it makes the interventions much more effective than when they are delivered by people who aren't necessarily digital savvy. This is also a data from our 2018 policy survey, that very few education systems require or have present in most schools partnerships of digital experts. Teachers cannot do it alone.
In education systems around the OECD and in non-OECD countries, we know that teachers are reporting high levels of stress, they are being asked to do more with fewer resources, so we really need to harness the power of partnerships in order to implement programmes both to develop digital literacy and also to keep children safe in the digital environment.
And with that, I will stop sharing and I will pass back to Timea. Thank you.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much, Francesca. What you can see developing here for partnerships on how we can combine some of these initiatives that on the policy level, on the projects level, on the development level technically speaking and in terms of content emerging from this discussion. For that, I think our next speaker, who will play a video intervention, she will highlight also another point that you shared here, especially (?) homogenous group and (muffled audio) contextual differences (?) when talking about their connectivity.
Try again and see if we can now have the video intervention by Rachel Cooper from UNICEF.
>> RACHEL COOPER: Hello, everyone. I wish I could be joining (muffled audio).
>> RACHEL COOPER: My name is Rachel Cooper and I (muffled audio)
(Audio difficulty)
>> TIMEA SUTO: We have reached the end of this video. I'm sure sorry you were not able to hear what we hear in the room. (muffled audio)
(Audio difficulty)
>> TIMEA SUTO: Into the conversation for later. And apologies on behalf of the tech team here. Be some sort of a glitch with the system.
So, what Rachel was sharing is highlighting the absolute need for additional skills, especially when you look at skills needed in school and for these children (?) part of the labour force.
She also highlighted that, again, as I said earlier, children are the homogenous group and we see especially the gender divide quite pronounced when we talk about the opportunities for skilling for children. She noted that male children about 30% more likely to receive digital skills training than female children.
She also talked about children, disadvantaged groups in particular refugees and children travel across areas to receive, to access training and many times their skills are incompatible or (muffled audio) so, she noted (muffled audio) that currently is live, project is live in 27 countries to help children from disadvantaged groups.
So, the learnings that I managed to jot down quickly and share with you to bring to the conversation and for (?) or reflections later.
And now on this idea that children are a homogenous group and voices' specially -- gender and (muffled audio) I'd like to (muffled audio) to share with you a couple of (?) from a project she is leading with Girlhype here in the African content.
>> THOKO MIYA: Good afternoon, evening. I'm Thoko Miya. I'm a gender ICT activist and have been involved in the interdisciplinary space of education for girls specifically, for just going on 10 years. And I'm really excited to be able to share some of the insights in the time that I have been with an organization called Girlhype, which is rebounded in 2022 to be African Girls Code, so we will work on Girlhype African Girls Code for the foreseeable future.
And Girlhype is based in South Africa, Johannesburg and ASF Durbin, where we are empowering and enabling girls into enter into the ICT, STEM and math and science related industries.
The reason for this is, obviously, we see there's a disparity. In South Africa there's 22.6% of women in ICT careers, which is really bad when we look at the fact that those are the highest paying jobs.
If we look at international women's day for 2022, it seems -- the theme was breaking the bias and we have certainly been working towards breaking the bias and mentality but also in implementation and it's, actually, for us very important to note the difference in the way girls are educated and note how we can create the challenges, how we can bridge the challenges to that education and how these girls are able to enter into tech careers and ICT skills going into the future.
So, specifically in South Africa -- well, actually, globally in 2023 we are going to be celebrating the -- a change a lot. I think it's the Commonwealth -- this year the Commonwealth will be celebrating 20 years. And a lot has happened for the past two decades. No. No. So, Girlhype will be celebrating 20 years in 2023, right. And a lot has happened in that time.
And it's just been an exciting period, actually, but so Girlhype was started by a woman named Baratang Miya, and at the time there was -- the world was vastly different and technology hadn't developed in the same way, particularly in Africa. That what we are looking at in terms of technology now and what we define as technology and digital development was just at its very, very beginning stages. It was still highly impractical. It was highly unmobile and it wasn't penetrative as an individual based looking across platform, use of technology, our social circumstances has, therefore, changed and we are looking at a generation that's future is looking to be less physical in itself. We have to ensure that we future proof the futures and allow for the future contexts of work to include women and girls in Africa.
So, how we are doing this is specifically through interventions, learning interventions, whether they are on the ground or at a policy and Intergovernmental level.
So, a lot of our work is done in collaboration with partners. We partner with corporate and private sector, civil society organizations and run a number of skills development programmes for youth, for women and girls from our campus. We have partnered with C Com to built a really beautiful campus in Cape Town, South Africa. And the work that we are doing has taught well over a million -- the work that we are doing -- sorry, I'm so short. Has over well over a million -- taught well over a million girls to code. And what we have noticed in the time that we have been creating this education, is that when you do teach a girl child to code and I will speak from my personal experience as a coding teacher and ICT facilitator. When you do teach a girl child to code, the chance of that individual then taking on an ICT, STEM or computer science degree at university level changes from 0 to 100%.
So, at Girlhype, we have, with our internalized students, the ones that we keep from the age of 15 to 18, a 100% attrition rate into ICT at university level. We are talking specifically about girls from township areas in South Africa and, you know, where opportunities are really, really slim, the communities are with gangsterism, drugs and other societal, social political challenges.
So, the work that we do is seeing that we are able to bridge these gaps, bridge the gap from social context to educative context which reflect in economic opportunities, employment, jobs and a change in industry overall, whether it's to make the digital world safer, healthier, more accessible, and to, actually, encourage greater parity, representation, transformation, cooperation, and collaboration.
We are looking at actually just working together as opposed to independently. So, a lot of the work that we do also fosters on these grounds and we work a lot with partners, global partners that are aligned with the same missions, which is what we are looking at right now.
Girlhype is actually also a partner with the Parida and the UN on a project that was launched over the course of the UN IGF 2022, which is a women in tech policy hub, which will morph into a women in tech policy association and a conference taking place in February 2023.
And a large part of that is to just also create knowledge around policy and spaces within the IGF sector, which is still fairly new and should look towards greater inclusion if it's going to be more participatory in years to come.
So, we are highly multidisciplinary, but at the core of our work is the fact that girls and women have an opportunity in STEM and have a right to be in these spaces. But beyond their rights, if there aren't programmes and implemented projects and people working to ensure that the policy is written, that the programmes are created, that the initiatives are funded that need these programmes and that there is monitoring and evaluation and we get the feedback that we require, we are not going to be able to create the kind of gender transformation that we want and to keep our girl children safe and give them the future in the digital world, which they deserve.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I am told your mic works better than main but we will have to jump through the table to reach it. So, I will continue to use this. I apologize for that.
We have about 15 minutes remaining on our clock here for this session. So, I want to turn to the audience. You have heard from all these many wonderful speakers, from all these different areas of the world and stakeholder groups highlighting what they all do, be that in designing responsible tech devices and services online, be that influencing the understanding of this world and shaping the policy space to be responsive, be that running partnerships and projects that come to the aid of the overstressed educational sector, be that inspiring partnerships with families and schools or communities in general.
So, there's a lot already very rich ideas from this panel. But I would love to hear from the audience, if you have questions or projects that you yourself would want to share, that to compliment that conversation. And in meantime I'm going to ask my panelists to think of a Tweet they would want to send to this session, please don't make it technology is bad, we cannot hear anything. But something that is your one-sentence takeaway from our conversations. Anybody in the room that would like to share anything, or online, please, of course, you can put your hand up and ask your question.
Edmond, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. Edmond Chong here. I don't know whether the online folks can hear me. But thank you so much for the presentations. Actually, very interested in many of the topics, especially how to create platforms that protect children and, you know, while they grow freely and, you know, be able to nurture them.
The reason -- the question I wanted to ask is, we, from Dot Asia, we are supporting a new top-level domain, Dot Kids, which is just launching out. We are working very closely with different parties to try to maintain the platform in the way that, I guess, both Amazon and OECD's presentation and Chicos mentioned, how -- what are some of the things that -- I guess my question is really, what are some of the things that are effective in maintaining, kind of, a protective environment while also allowing kids to explore themselves more freely. That's really something that we are grappling with as we develop Dot Kids and would like to, I guess, hear from you.
And, in fact, this is also an open invitation for all of you to help us. We are organizing as a nonprofit and, you know, would like to get your advice and support generally anyway as well.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, Edmond. Would anybody from the panel wish to take that question or respond?
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: Sure. If I may, Timea, just to jump in.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Simon wants to jump in so I will turn to him afterwards.
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: Just one note from our side, in the 21st Century children project in the OECD, we are thinking about one of our trends of work is reimaging a child's centered future. And this is thinking about how can we create spaces for children with children. I think using -- or not using children. But incorporating the voices of children, thinking about children as their own stakeholder group in creating platforms with them rather than for them is essential, because I don't know about many of you, but it looks like most of us are much older than children these days. So, we can't imagine necessarily all the different platforms they are using. It's really hard to keep up, especially those of us working in schools and policy. Maybe less so for people developing the apps and the technologies.
But I think really asking children what do they need out of a system, what do they need out of a platform, what do they want, and really listening to them as a stakeholder group and incorporating their voices into developing any kind of programme or platform, I think that's key.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: I agree with Francesca. I took some notes. First of all, to design project or offer project with children perspective. And develop child center products based on their interests and product that encourage play, exploration, active views.
Another point is avoiding that data collection and monetization of this data, of course.
And next is recognizing the diversity of children from different contexts, culture, languages, way of thinking, promoting their representation, their representation of all kind of groups, like girls, indigenous, children from rural areas. They have to see themselves represented on the internet and this will allow breaking the cycle of exclusion.
>> SIMON MORRISON: I agree with both previous interventions. I would only add that, you know, building such an environment also requires a great deal of policy and operational expertise and the ability to act in an agile way to respond to new and developing threats, but also merely changes in the environment both from within, you know, new behaviors that might emerge, might be harmful and from without, in terms of bad actors.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much Edmond. Do you want to respond?
>> AUDIENCE: Quickly. Thank you so much for the thoughts and feedback. And, actually, I did ask my Aden, 10-year-old, what should I do? And their response was, they thought about it, and nothing. And then they come back and say, less ads.
On a more serious note, I think that's very important. We, actually, do work with children-led groups in Europe and in Hong Kong, kids stream and some of the children's councils, and their input into some of the policies were part of what we do as well.
But thank you for the feedback.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, everyone. I don't see any hands online for further questions. But there's one in the room.
Yes, please. And then I will turn to the panelists. Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon, everyone. It's been very interesting listening to everyone, especially Thoko was eloquent in the presentation.
I am a digital skills (?) provider. My question is to Francesca for education and skills. What are your thoughts about how to provide digital skills in a low internet area without digital labs?
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: This is a really good question. And I think it's a tough one. But I think when we think about digital skills, so I think there are certain skills such as operational skills, that really require access, unfortunately. But when we look at a number of other digital skills. So, in the chart that I showed, when we asked what kind of digital skills are taught at different levels of education, a lot of those are also 21st Century skills. They are offline skills, things like creativity, things like critical thinking, being able to understand the intent behind something. So, the spam email example from the PISA chart.
I think that these are skills that can be taught in analog ways. And it's really thinking about what are the transversal skills that children need to stay safe when they do have access to a digital tool. For example, thinking about children as actors in their own digital content -- context. So, thinking about the conduct risks, for example. How can we teach children how to behave in a way that is thoughtful of others, where they are not bullying because, for example, we know for cyber bullying, the biggest correlation in cyber bullying is traditional bullying. How to engage with others that will translate into the digital environment.
I think thinking about the operational skills, that's quite difficult. I'm not sure how we do that, necessarily. Maybe the other panelists have an idea. But really the transversal skills, the critical thinking, the creativity, the social skills, staying safe, I think those are all things that can be incorporated into a more traditional curriculum without the use of digital devices.
I hope that answers the question. A.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much, Francesca. Unfortunately, we are running out of time. And there might be another session after us so we will have to finish on time. But we have about two minutes, so I hope that my panelists have thought about their one sentence or, still, 140 characters takeaway, maybe it will be longer later. But please share with us your main takeaways from this panel.
I'm going to go backwards from the order that we spoke of. So I will turn to you, Miya Thoko, first.
>> THOKO MIYA: Thank you for the floor and for the question. Congratulations to the Dot Asia and the kids platform, that's really quite progressive of you and it's so required. There are a number of the social houses as well, social media and other platforms, which have separate kids platforms, NetFlix and YouTube have separate kid lock platforms. Perhaps you could look at private sector to see how you can partner and collaborate with them in creating safe child spaces online.
So, just in closing, my last few words, those were not it. My last few words. I think definitely in this process we have to maintain an air of universality and understanding that we are not looking to regender or remarginalized or create further entrenchment of past principles in the next generations but working towards a more open and progressive society and in that process we have to look at how can we create these spaces so that not only the platforms, but the content, the regulation and parental controls within these spaces are indicative and representative to the people, the next generation, be the future population that we want to see reflected.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much.
Francesca.
>> FRANCESCA GOTTSCHALK: Perhaps this is a bit cliche but my Tweet would be it takes a village to keep children safe and included and we need to think about children as stakeholders in this village.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you. Mariela.
>> MARIELA REIMAN: Yes. I usually say that we are living in a paradox of childhood in the connected society, part of children are hyper connected and we have to give them the opportunities to make a better and meaningful use of digital media. And a lot of children are underconnected and we have to give them the possibility to learn and create with technology, even without connectivity and with basic or very poor technology and devices. And we can do it.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much, Mariela.
Simon.
>> SIMON MORRISON: Yeah. I would say to create good environments for children, we must not only protect them, but empower them with a wide range of skills.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much. I hope we can share these messages. We will be sharing them through the IGF channels, but I do hope that we can collaborate in the future in bringing these more vocally out there. I think this was a very rich session, a very enriching conversation and I personally learned a lot from all of you.
So, if I can encourage one thing is I think I heard the word linkages, partnerships throughout the conversation, not only partnerships between the stakeholders who are designing or deploying these products or services or projects, but also, as Francesca said, everybody in the village, the families, the educators, the children themselves, and then a very important thing as well, not to lose focus that the digital world doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is a true replication of our physical world. Perhaps a bit of a -- of hard pill to swallow to see us confronted with the issues that we are -- maybe don't see every day in the daily world because our daily lives are not as broad as our digital lives. But those issues that we have to solve for digital world are inherently physical issues and we need to make sure that we have that linkage with that. And we think about that when we think about connecting children online and how do we translate our worlds and make them work better and not repeat the world's issues and disparities for the next generation.
I leave you with that and I leave you with huge thanks to my panelists both here in the room and online. And apologies, again, for the technical difficulties. My compliments to you for braving through it. And let's make sure the next session, the next idea is going to be smoother. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to my team.