On February 18, the ninth Dialog Online Interregional Scientific and Practical Conference on children and teenagers’ cybersecurity problems took place in Vladimir. The event focused on the current tasks of cyber and media security during society’s intense digitalization. The conference was organized as part of the state program “Ensuring children’s cybersecurity and producing information products for children and trade in the Vladimir Region.”
As per tradition, the event was organized by the Vladimir Region Library for Children and Youth with the support from the Vladimir Region Culture Department and the Novikova Vladimir Institute for Education Development. About 300 participants took part in the conference which was held in a hybrid online-offline format: teachers, librarians, and internet security specialists. Experts of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ were also invited to participate.
The conference opened with welcoming remarks by Viktoria Vlasenko, head of the Information and Computer Section of the Vladimir Region Education Department. According to her, education needs to undergo a number of changes because of the digital transformation and the development of the digital environment that today’s children and youth navigate:
“Digital technologies help make education more accessible and equally meaningful for everyone. However, there are problems with organizing a comfortable information environment and with the existence of illegal content on the internet. We have to consider this and above all teach children and youth to work with information,” Vlasenko said.
The conference continued with a report from Viktor Volchek, research engineer from the Institute of Informatics Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He noted there was a tendency toward a shift in the education paradigm: from “education for life” to “education throughout life.” The last paradigm is successfully sustained by remote education formats, which “make good-quality knowledge accessible to everyone.” However, there are downsides to online education, too:
“First, some families lack enough equipment and communications channels. Second, the burden of organizing the education process falls entirely on parents, and they may not be ready for it. Third, children can show signs of burnout as well as physical and mental health problems,” said Viktor Volchek. He added that time management skills, which should be acquired not only by children, but also by parents, workplace organization and a schedule will help to cope with these problems. Security should not be forgotten either: internet filter software must be installed on the home network, and separate secure accounts created for children to access the internet.
Irina Alborova, head of the children's dispensary department of the Vladimir Regional Psychiatric Hospital No. 1, talked about a problem that can arise when remote education encourages the constant use of digital technologies: computer addiction. The most common manifestations of this "disease" include internet surfing or surfing the web in order to search for information that does not have deep meaning, and addiction to virtual communication and video games. The addiction can manifest psychologically in the form of depressive disorders, increased anxiety and loss of interest in learning and communication, and can also have physical repercussions, such as visual impairment, dry eye syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, and sleep disturbance.
“One of the ways to prevent computer addiction is for people to spend time together emotionally, including with gadgets. A grandson teaching his grandmother how to use a computer and websites is a good example of such interaction. This is both communication and a way to distract someone from aimlessly navigating of the network.”
Viktoria Bunchuk, press secretary and social project manager of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, talked about a cybersecurity project that would be helpful for children and youth as well as parents and teachers: she focused on .ДЕТИ domain (the Coordination Center took part in its creation), because this domain zone has a system to monitor abuse, and websites in .ДЕТИ always remain safe and user-friendly for internet beginners, with two notable educational projects teaching children how to navigate the internet safely: персональныеданные.дети, developed by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), and касперский.дети from Kaspersky Lab. Explore the Internet & Govern It is another large digital literacy project implemented by the Coordination Center with the support of Rostelecom. It includes an interactive website with educational games, a quiz with 300 exciting questions about the internet and digital technologies, an application with tests, and an internet dictionary. “The platform regularly holds online tournaments and championships in cyber literacy. Safe online behavior is one of the main topics of our project. For example, the site has three game modules dedicated to protection against phishing, online privacy and general security rules. Almost every round of the quiz has questions related to cybersecurity. And once we devoted a whole championship to this topic!” said Viktoria Bunchuk.
Other projects Viktoria talked about included digital literacy dictations and Cyberdictations on financial IT literacy held annually with the support of the Coordination Center, and the Domain Patrol website where users can find information about cyberthreats, instructions on how to behave when confronted with one, and hotlines of the competent organizations.
Another report on the conference was dedicated to the features of the Alpha generation: children born after 2010 who have been able to access digital technologies almost since birth. Oksana Teslavskaya, researcher psychologist at the Internet Development Foundation, noted that this generation was characterized by living in a mixed reality where the difference between the real and the virtual world was being erased. They also have specific cognitive processes, including multitasking, quick-wittedness and flexibility of thinking, while memory works specifically: it is important not to know, but to understand where to look; however, they have higher online privacy requirements than their parents.
“To prevent interest in the internet from becoming an addiction, parents of Alpha children should play an active role in teaching them how to use digital technologies, they should be interested in their children’s internet activities, and besides that, look for ways to spend time together and control themselves when using digital technologies: demands made upon a child should apply to the parents themselves,” Oksana Teslavskaya said.
A resolution was adopted following the ninth Dialogue Online Interregional Scientific and Practical Conference. In particular, it notes that in order to solve topical cybersecurity issues in the context of the digitalization of society, and to increase the general level of digital literacy and digital culture, it is recommended that librarians, teachers and other specialists working with children “develop cooperation with the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ <...> on the implementation of new forms of educational work in the Vladimir Region to promote a safe internet.”
The conference’s plenary session and the section “Children and teenagers’ safety in the global online environment” are available at the official YouTube channel of the Vladimir Regional Library for Children and Youth.
