In the coming months, parents and teachers peruvians will include material from Google to educate children and youth about Internet privacy and security to combat, among others, cases of 'cyberbullying'. As announced in conversation with The Trade the expert in Security of Google for Latin america, Gabriela Hadid.
As part of the celebrations for the International Day of Safe Internet, Google designed a study to “understand what are the attitudes of parents in relation to the online safety of their children,” explained Hadid. This is to “strengthen digital education amongst the young”.
During the last months of 2016, Google spoke with 6,000 parents of children between the ages of 3 and 16 years old from 16 different countries (including Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil) to understand the “current state of the counseling that they provide to their children, what are the habits of children on the Internet and what are the concerns of the parents.”
the study of Google “How can parents keep their children safe on the Internet” that the average age of children in receiving their first device to access the web is at the age of nine, while 22% of those under sail using at least two devices.
The vast majority of the parents of the world have spoken at some point with your children about the contents that can be shared online, but only 52% imposes some restrictions on the time of chat or play with strangers,” explained Hadid. The case in the region is similar. 67% of parents allow their children to use their own cell phones and tablets to access the Internet.
The big problem for the parents of Latin America is that their children to talk and exchange personal information with strangers. 68% of the 2.430 people surveyed in the region discussed with their children about this topic; while the mere contact with strangers is concerned about the 38%. In a curious way, more than half believe that the most common problem that affects children is the download of malicious software and applications.
Peru is an important market
Although not considered to be samples of the Peru for the study, the specialist Google have the belief that since the “data by country show us a reality very similar, and that the metrics of the Internet in Peru are in line with that of other Latin american countries, we consider that the data may also be valid for this Peru”.
The safety expert pointed out that “we cannot confirm precisely [the data of other countries, in Peru], but that is an extrapolation of the results and take it as such, but anyway we believe that it is a trend fairly representative of the region”.
Having knowledge of this is that Google presents a series of tools and programmes for the digital education of children and young people in Latin America. Peru, to be an important market for Google, according to Hadid, will be included in initiatives such as the Digital Generation.
“Digital Generation is one of the initiatives that we started out with Google just last year, in that sense it is quite new,” said Gabriela Hadid. “It is a program of digital citizenship in which we seek to bring concepts and tools to teachers working on the issues [of security and privacy on the Internet as 'cyberbullying' and chat with strangers] with the students”, he added.
The program began in Argentina. Then, it spread in markets such as Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. The expert in security of Google told this Newspaper that “the plans [the Internet browser] are expanded also to other markets such as Chile and Peru in this year and for that we are working on a new format that will allow us to make it more scalable”.
The project will be adapted to the need and currency of each country. “We have to think of the boys, but also in the teachers and in the families that form this triangle of how we wish to focus on privacy and security online,” explained Hadid.
tools
Although there is not yet an exact date for the launch of this initiative in Peru, it has been known that will be in “the next two or three months” and “all the countries of Latin America can access the material to be able to bring this program to the different schools of the region.”
By now, Peru is part of the campaign “Safe Internet” Google launched after the results of the study “How parents keep their children safe on the Internet”. So we draw two ‘populations’ to the Google will attempt to reach.
on the one hand, the parents-who are the end users – will be concientizados about the problems in the Internet and in parallel will develop a guide to family safety.
The other population are the boys. For them, Google developed a series of videos with 'youtubers' of Latin america, as the peruvian Valeria Basurco, that they have had experiences and situations on security and privacy in the network. “We know that young people listen to other young people, that is why we call on the creators” of YouTube, said the specialist Google.
DATA:
the International Day of Safe Internet was born in 2004. Today is celebrated in more than 100 countries. “Has as main objective to promote the responsible use and positive of the digital tools among users, especially among children and young people,” explained Hadid.
