To prevent violence on the Internet, it is important to openly talk about the problem, conduct specialist training, and carry out educational activities among parents and children. The educational project #stop_sexting focuses on the protection of children in kindergartens and junior high schools, because a study conducted last year in Ukraine among children aged 5–18 showed that:
- 84% of children start using the Internet at the age of 5–11. There is a tendency to “rejuvenate” the beginning of using the Internet every year.
- 83% of children saw sexual content for the first time between the ages of 7 and 13. Younger children found it difficult to identify their feelings from such content, they have a significantly higher fear index than older children.
The British organization Internet Watch Foundation identified the most common types of crimes against children on the Internet over the past year:
- self-created content of a sexual nature (selfies), which children were forced to do at the request of criminals, at home in their rooms: IWF found 73% of such content;
- web streams that children are forced to watch from home;
- pulling into these live broadcasts, the streams of their younger brothers and sisters, who do not even know that it can be recorded (in 57% of content they saw this very trend).
#stop_sexting, Ukrainian animation studio Wow-How Studio, as well as children’s writer Ira Bova are pleased to present the first cartoon in Ukraine about children’s safety online “Happie and her superpower” in Ukrainian and English.
This story is an ideal starting point for discussing safe internet use with children aged 5–10. The tale tells about a turtle named Happy, who studies in junior high school, and how most children like to use gadgets. One day, Happy receives a friend request on a social network. The turtle accepts it and communicates with a stranger — Triton. How this story ends, watch with your children on YouTube.