The 15th edition of Safer Internet Day debuted with a press conference held in Prague, in the European House. On the occasion, the Czech SIC launched two competitions:
- the traditional competition focusing on promoting SID 2018 in schools, public libraries and information centres for young people which ends on 31 March with winners being awarded valuable prizes.
- a competition called What's Your Story?: a youth contest launched by TrendMicro for the first time in the Czech Republic.
Prof. David Smahel, member of the EU Kids Online team, published interesting figures from his research of the behaviour of Czech children on the internet. His research showed that 26 per cent of children complain that their parents had published online information about them without asking for their permission, and 13 per cent of children have already asked their parents to delete some information published without their authorisation.
The conference also addressed the approaching deadline for implementing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the issues related to the age limit for parental consent raised a lot of attention among journalists and the media. During the workshop, among the most discussed aspects pertaining to the GDP was the obligation of governments to discuss with children the legislation that affects them.
Children from Czechia, Croatia, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Slovakia discussed GDPR-related issues as well as the best ways to become involved in the preparation of the next Safer Internet Day, SID4EU and SID4Kids initiatives.
An important outcome of the discussion is the Call of the children of the Czech SIC Youth Panel addressing the Czech government, Czech Parliament and also other child organisations to keep the age limit at 13 years, to speed up the process of adoption of the new legislation for personal data protection, and to establish a system to inform, stimulate and enable children to have their say about the legislation affecting them before it is adopted and mandatory. The call is accessible on Saferinternetday.cz website.