“There are far more digital innocents than digital natives.”
For Olivier Le Deuff, a lecturer at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne, the idea of digital_natives is a myth, and using digital tools, far from coming naturally, requires special training in order to think more critically about one’s own habits. As the French government is massively deploying tablets and PCs in schools, it’s essential to assist students (and teachers!)
How do young people perceive the dangers of the Internet and the need to protect their personal data? How to raise awareness on this matter? Cyril Di Palma, VP of Génération Numérique, answered our questions.
Non-profit organisation Génération Numérique specialises in education on digital issues. It employs 13 people who travel around France speaking at schools and other organisations such as town halls, medical centres and consumer associations to inform and raise awareness on digital issues.
Tell us about the lectures you give?
We organise training sessions, during which our speakers go visit the organisations who contact us. We talk to them – both adults and children – about, depending on the nature of their request, the issues and risks associated with the Internet and, more generally, digital tools. We illustrate our talks with a slideshow combining screenshots of websites and videos, which gets a debate going.
We cover all the main digital usages. With the youngest kids, we might talk about access to information, the need to compare and verify sources, but also anything to do with communication, particularly where the social networks and messaging are concerned: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and now, Periscope. We also talk about social media, about illegally downloading films and video-sharing platforms such as Youtube and Dailymotion. And some of our sessions aim to show how time-consuming and addictive video games can be.
With the digital programme for schools and the mass deployments of hardware that this implies, have more and more schools been asking for your services?
There are many reasons organisations turn to us and one of these is the deployment of digital solutions. In that case, it’s our job to help the future users familiarise themselves with them.
When we come to schools, we talk about the social networks and their role in school life, as well as more technical matters, such as hacking, identity theft, the right to be forgotten, data security, safety of people – whether individuals or organisations, because school heads are very conscious of the image their students and teachers can post of their school on the social networks.
56% OF SCHOOLCHILDREN BELIEVE THAT INTernet AND DIGITAL TOOLS AREN’T VERY risKY
Are children aware of the dangers of the Internet and the need to protect their personal data?
A survey conducted with a sample of 8,772 11-18 year-olds between February and March 2016 gave us a very clear idea of how these dangers are perceived: only 44% per cent of the children polled believed the Internet and digital tools were risky or very risky.
And not only are they not aware of the risks, but their perception of danger doesn’t necessarily reflect reality: they see risks where there are none, and feel safe when they’re not at all.
For example, they many believe that online games are very dangerous, without being able to explain why exactly, whereas they see absolutely no harm in having 500 friends on a social network and chatting to complete strangers. This sort of paradoxical behaviour – a mixture of excessive caution and extreme naivety – is very common among teenagers.
It’s a bit different with adults. They have a more negative perception. They’re more wary than kids, although a lot of them aren’t really aware of all the risks they could face. It would never occur to them, for example, that they might receive a fake email from the Inland Revenue or their telecom provider: they know there are scams and phishing attempts but don’t believe it will happen to them.
SOCIAL MEDIA: RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT PRIVACY AND THE CONCEPT OF SLANDER
Do schools feel powerless against these risks?
School staff could do what we do, only they’re faced with two problems. For one thing, they don’t go on regular training courses to update their technology skills. They can of course give some general advice, but they can’t give specific, expert tips. And that’s what they need.
Another issue is that they don’t have the same credibility in this role as we do with their students, or even their colleagues: so they won’t get the same attention we do. Schools come to us because we’re experts. Also, the questions we raise with students are mainly “life matters”, about using digital for personal reasons, not necessary for school. Social networks aren’t used much in class, but do cause a lot of conflicts and fights in the playground. When we talk about Facebook, it’s mainly to talk about users’ rights and duties, not for using them in the school environment.
When we talk about the social networks, we also cover more general issues such as privacy and slander and we look at the conditions for using Facebook or Snapchat. Again, these are subjects that are far more relevant to home life than school.
=> Also on our blog: Twittclasses, Twiterature, Frenchteach: teaching in the digital age
Do you follow what happens in these schools after you’ve been to see them?
What we do see is that it creates a dialogue between students and teachers: everyone learns a lot. That’s why schools ask us to go back year after year: it’s a long-term process.
We ask the schools and organisations to give feedback on our service, and what constantly comes up is that people are pleased with our talks and they find them very useful I terms of information and prevention. On the other hand, they suggest we could improve things by personalising the training more. Schools would like us to go on line before we come to see them and find some of their students’ Facebook accounts, so we can use them as examples during the talks. Unfortunately, that would take hours of preparation and is complicated from a logistics standpoint.
FIGHTING AGAINST TROLLING AND radicalisation
Aside from schools, do you work with local or national authorities?
There’s a big grassroots demand for our services. So we work with communities and towns, for example, Vincennes, Annemasse and Cherbourg.
We also work closely with the Ministry of Education on combatting violence, in the broadest sense of the word: fights resulting from Facebook posts or tweets, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or sexist comments or attitudes. We also help schools fight against trolling.
Another part of our collaboration with the Ministry involves countering radicalisation and terrorist recruitment. We’ve been working on this for years: ten years ago, we looked at recruitment by cults, whereas these days, our concern more about is attempts to lure young people to go to Syria or Iraq. We deconstruct stuff that’s on the Internet, and explain how these messages are created, what the purpose is and the impact. We analyse the way the media are used, for example, by showing how a sectarian promotional video is made like a teaser for a video game – which is of course deliberate.
=> Also on our blog: The Futoroscope pilot high school: helping students make their way in the digital world