May 2017 04

Young People in a Hyper Connected World: Beyond Do’s and Don’ts for Online Safety

YMCA, Mumbai

The Annual Stakeholders Conference on Child Sexual Abuse (ASCCSA) is a national level conference on child sexual abuse organised by the Foundation, and four day-long seminars are part of the pre-events of the program. The Internet Democracy Project will hold one such one-day seminar along with Point of View, Mumbai, on ‘Young people in a hyper connected world: beyond do’s and don’ts for online safety’. Nayantara Ranganathan and Dr. Anja Kovacs are co-facilitating the workshop with Smita Vanniyar from Point of View.

Young people are said to have an intuitive familiarity with the Internet and new technologies. Yet, how can guardians rest assured that they are capable of using the internet safely? In this workshop, we will take a rights based approach to address young people’s safety online, rather than one focused on restrictions or generic do’s and don’ts. We will first explore young people’s aspirations and behaviours in the digital sphere. We will then examine differences in how young people and adults see online threats, by using threat frameworks to learn to identify and assess threats that are encountered in the use of ICTs. Building on this understanding, we will finally explore relevant behaviours and tools which can help young people and their guardians in navigating the Internet and the wider digital realm more safely — because we are all vulnerable to threats and staying safe need not equate to staying off the internet, for young people or adults.