… and have the entire Internet at their fingertips, so to speak. But even children of preschool age are coming into contact with digital media at an increasingly young age. Nowadays, children and young people grow up in a diverse media world. They play computer games, search for information and practise social networking on the Internet, and communicate with their friends via smartphone. However, digital media isn’t just about opportunities, fun and entertainment – it can also pose a range of risks and dangers.
We all agree on one thing: keeping them away altogether is neither feasible nor sensible. At school and in the workplace, digital media are the norm and provide support with a wide range of tasks. This is precisely why it is important for young people to learn how to
- critically assess the content they see;
- identify possible dangers;
- protect themselves against them;
- and ask for help in an emergency.
Parents and teachers should play an important role as confidential listeners and valuable providers of support. We believe that this support should become even more active in everyday media life, and would like to help and encourage parents and teachers in this regard.
Parents often know very little about their children’s favourite digital playgrounds, however. This is why we offer the following topics for parents, 8- to 12-year-olds and 13- to 18-year-olds in our Baloise Digital 4 Family workshop:
- Social networks: Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- Videos, clips and all the rest (YouTube)
- Various chats (WhatsApp, Snapchat)
- An insight into virtual worlds
- Augmented reality (Baloise Park app)
- Parental control settings on smartphones
- The basics of cyber security and tips and tricks on the web
This workshop is currently still in planning. Booking will be possible here once the first dates have been defined.
The Baloise Digital Scouts are committed to raising awareness of digitalisation issues in society – in collaboration with Stadtluft Basel, the Baloise Digital Scouts have commissioned a comic book with three stories to educate younger generations about the dangers of digitalisation. The comic book is intended to provide easier access to the various issues of digitalisation in a fun way. The three stories deal with well-known and widespread Internet dangers such as phishing, ransomware and cyberbullying. The comic book is structured in such a way that at the end of the three stories there is a possible continuation with two different scenarios.
The reader can decide which course of action is right in his or her eyes, and is informed of the solution at the very end of the comic book. The realistic stories ensure that the reader recognises the situation and knows how to deal with it if it were to occur in real life. The book is aimed mainly at children and young people, with cybercrime issues presented in a simple, playful and understandable way. In addition to this, only the title pages of the individual cases are coloured, and the rest can be coloured in by the child. This possibility for individual design makes the book more attractive and encourages a more focussed approach to the subject.