State Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić, has said at the media conference in the Press Centre of UNS, on the occasion of the end of campaign IT Caravan 02 that 14% of citizens who have participated in the survey carried out during the campaign, said that their children had been contacted by strangers on the Internet.
11% stated that their children had been exposed to peer violence on the Internet, while 30% of them told that their children had been exposed to inappropriate content.
“Those are additional indicators that though children are rather skilful with innovative tools and know contents offered to them in the digital world, they are not protected enough from the abuse of new technologies. This is why I believe that education and prevention we realise through this project are of key importance for a better online safety of children”, says Ms Matić.
She has announced the follow-up campaign next year, with a higher involvement of parents in the project itself, since they have shown a great interest in lectures on protection of children when using new technologies.
The significance of education for online safety of children and the campaign itself were the topics of the conference where the chief police inspector of the Department for fight against high-tech crime in the Ministry of Interior Tatjana Đurašković spoke, emphasizing that pupils for whom the school presentations were organised within the IT Caravan were carefully listening to the cases of abuse of the Internet presented to them by the inspectors of the Ministry of Interior.
“Children have demonstrated their knowledge about what potential online dangers are, but they are not aware of real dangers of online communication with strangers. This is why it is necessary to have a continuous education the Ministry of Interior is trying to implement in cooperation with other ministries”, says Ms Đurašinović.
Other participants and representatives of the partners of IT Caravan also spoke at the conference: advisor for information and communication technologies in the Ministry of Education Snežana Marković, Nikola Orlić from Microsoft company, representative of the organisation Save the Children Vasilije Ljubinković, founder of the “Tijana Jurić” Foundation Irgo Jurić, then host of the presentations – psychologist and expert for digital communications Ana Mirković and an actor and musician Bojan Ivković, as well as the team leader of experts in robots of “IT Caravan 02” Alen Piljak, while editor in chief for school programme of RTS Nevena Mladenović-Blagojević presented the media campaign for online safety of children.
Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications carried out the campaign IT Caravan 02 from April 12 until May 25, 2017, in Novi Pazar, Pirot, Niš, Zaječar, Kraljevo, Užice, Čačak, Valjevo, Kragujevac, Subotica, Novi Sad, Pančevo and Sombor.
Presentation on protection from digital violence and other forms of abuse of children on the Internet was participated by more than 5500 pupils and around 90 teachers from 17 primary schools in Serbia.
