The ESOI 100-page book is ready to send to print!
“Better Parents for Internet. How to support parents in the digital environment” is edited by Paolo Celot of EAVI with contributions by the ESOI partners. It illustrates our 3-year experience training hundreds of parents across Europe and it aims to contribute to the debate on digital parenting offering reflections and policy recommendations.
Here is a little preview of what is to come.
Introduction
Observing children playing outside or walking to school on their own is becoming rare.
Children represent about one in five of the EU population, one in three internet users, and 90% of them are online. Most school-aged children spend half of their free time in front of a screen. Digital devices are available from a very early age. Social media, video, games and apps are accessed both at home and on the move.
As children get excited about new things that they discover online, some parents complain about their inability to focus on one specific task for an extended period of time and sometimes about their struggle to interact in person with other people.
Adults, too, are fully immersed in the digital environment.
Rarely though, do young and older people appear to live the same experiences or share the same spaces online and use the media together. It can still happen that a family plays a game in the living room, but the time when we were sitting on a sofa watching a TV programme together seems now gone.
Each family member has their own habits and it is difficult for parents to know what their children are doing exactly with their devices. This new incertitude makes parents feel anxious, inadequate and powerless: “Is it safe? Is it suitable for my child? Is she missing something, not watching the same video as her friends? What should I do?”.
Incidentally – to be fair to children, when parents were busy and put their convenience first, they did not seem so worried about using screens to keep children quiet and occupied. Nowadays instead, they appear more confused and disoriented in their daily efforts and are not sure where to seek expert guidance and advice.
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Soon available also to download from our website!
(Book cover shown above is for illustrative purposes only)
About Us
The European Safe Online Initiative is the brainchild of the Flemish SafeOnline Initiative applied to the larger context of the European Union by organisations from five EU countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania.
What do we do?
Associations and educational institutions bring their know-how to build a program to educate parents and other carers to become fully aware of the risks and opportunities the new media offer to their children.
Who are we?
Child Focus | Gezinsbond | La Ligue des Familles | Athens Lifelong Learning Institute | Universitatea de Vest Timisoara -UVT | University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski” | European University Cyprus | EAVI European Association for Viewers Interests