On February 7, the annual all-Russian video conference “Together for the Family Internet: Role and Opportunities of Libraries” was held as part of Safe Runet Week at the Russian State Children's Libraryб which brought together experts in the field of information literacy and childhood safety. This year, more than 3,000 people from most Russian regions took part in the conference.
Lyudmila Bokova, President of the Agency for Support of State Initiatives and Chairman of the Board of the Smart Internet Foundation, established by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ to support the .ДЕТИ domain, addressed the conference participants with a welcoming speech. She emphasized the importance of creating and promoting positive content for children and the youth, as well as the great contribution of librarians to this process.
Examples of positive content were given by Olga Mezentseva, Deputy Director of the Russian State Children's Library for Science and Educational Activities. Among them are the projects “Biblioguide” and “ProDetLit”. In 2023, their authors were awarded the Russian Government Prize in the field of media for their great work in popularizing children's and youth reading, developing exciting online resources on children's and teenage books to help teachers and parents.
Urvan Parfentyev, coordinator of the Center for Safe Internet, Director of the “NeDopusti” Foundation, emphasized in his greeting that Safe Runet Week has become a natural part of the cultural community and the Internet industry. Many schools and additional education organizations across the country hold a lot of events on the topic of safe Internet in order to increase the level of knowledge and awareness of the possibilities of the digital environment for self-development, broadening horizons, and expanding professional skills.
The plenary session continued with presentations by experts in the field of cybersecurity and the creation of children's content online.
Elizaveta Belyakova, Chairman of the Alliance for the Protection of Children in the Digital Environment, presented the results of the study “Organization for the Protection of Children and Adolescents from the Negative Impact of the Internet in Russia,” conducted by the organization together with Rostelecom and Mindsmith in 2023. Thus, according to surveys, 96% of Russian teenagers face digital threats. The most common among them are fakes, fraud, gaming addiction, Internet addiction and cyberbullying. Marina Pikuleva, Director of Special Research at Mediascope, spoke about another study - trends in media consumption and leisure time of modern teenagers.
Anastasia Koroleva (RAEC) spoke about plans to conduct another measurement of information and computer literacy of Russian Internet users in 2024 within the framework of the so-called "Digital dictation". Natalya Ryzhkova ("Pilot Media", Russian Society "Knowledge"" explained the dangers of digital addiction and presented the basic rules of cyber etiquette. Ilya Gavrishin (Russian State Children's Library) presented the updated National Electronic Children's Library ("НЭБ.ДЕТИ"), the collection of which represents the most significant works for children and works included in children's reading, designed by the best domestic illustrators, as well as materials that are a vivid reflection of historical, political, cultural, artistic and pedagogical processes that took place in our country in various historical periods.
Victoria Bunchuk, Head of Social Projects at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, spoke about the project to improve information and digital literacy “Study the Internet & Govern It” as an ecosystem that unites not only platform products (online educational simulators), but also educational events for students, work with visually challenged Internet users, all-Russian IT literacy competitions, an additional education program for teachers (School of Mentors “Explore the Internet”), a career guidance project “School of Real Affairs”, as well as a quiz for offline events and even a tabletop quiz a game based on the educational materials of the project.
Victoria also recalled the anniversary events in 2024. Thus, on February 26, the Cyrillic domain for children's and teenage sites .ДЕТИ will celebrate its 10th anniversary; on April 7, the national Russian domain .RU will celebrate its 30th anniversary. Around these dates, many events, including the Family IT Marathon, the creative task of which will be the preparation of a Family Guide to sites from the .ДЕТИ Catalog, and the 14th Russian Internet Governance Forum will take place.
The second part of the videoconference was held online between regions. This year, participants in the sectional sections included representatives of libraries from the Trans-Baikal and Stavropol Territories, Chelyabinsk, Volgograd, Novosibirsk, Samara, Tambov, Nizhny Novgorod, Belgorod and Rostov regions.
