Kick-off Meeting: Industry and civil society to make the Internet a safer place for kids - Main contents

Today's children are born into a digital world. They go online at ever younger ages on a diverse range of devices, frequently without any supervision by adults. While the Internet offers many opportunities for the next generation of digital natives, it also holds risks for the young who are often unaware of the dangers they may come across.

For instance, reports show that cyber-bullying is a severe and widespread form of harmful behaviour and that many children are concerned about violent or aggressive online content with potentially negative effects on their well-being and development.

Creating a safer digital environment in which children can flourish and act confidently is a shared responsibility: industry can contribute significantly to improving children's online experiences, for example by developing technical tools for parental control, age verification or content labelling. And civil society has a key role to play, too, by voicing the concerns of parents and children and pointing to emerging risks.

This is why I have asked industry and civil society to work together and prepare a common statement of purpose for a new initiative on this important issue. Today is the first meeting of global players representing social networks and online platforms, device manufacturers, telecom operators, broadcasters and media providers, and NGOs to promote children's digital well-being.

Last May, when we presented the proposal for a revised Audio-Visual Media Service Directive (AVMSD), I already announced a new Alliance to better protect minors online to curtail exposure to harmful content and behaviour online.

I have invited CEOs of leading ICT and media companies and representatives from civil society to join this alliance. It will identify risks that children may face online, promote the exchange of best practices, and its members will commit themselves to concrete actions, including a code of conduct, to protect minors in the digital world. However, the alliance will not start from scratch. It will build on the achievements and lessons learned from the CEO Coalition to make the Internet a better place for kids which was launched in 2011.

Work on the statement of purpose of the new alliance starts today, and I plan to present it on the Safer Internet Day on 7 February 2017. This initiative may also pave the way for the co-regulatory mechanisms for the protection of minors foreseen in AVMSD proposal, which provides for measures to restrict harmful content and curb hate speech on video-sharing platforms.

I am confident that the Alliance to better protect minors online will do its part to ensure that our children can make the most of their digital opportunities and that they can do so as safely as possible.