Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 29, 2011 - 14:30 PM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> TIM DAVIES: Good afternoon. Welcome to this panel on "Challenging Myths About Young People and the Internet."
Great to see so many of you here on a very warm day.
Quick housekeeping. There is Twitter traffic around this workshop, workshop number 92. So if you're tweeting, include IGF 11 and hash 92 in those tweets and that will form part of the workshop report so your input even if you don't speak will still be part of this session.
There's a paper that goes into more details and touches on some myths we won't explore here but I hope with our panel we'll get to cover many of them.
We also have some remote hubs joining us, so welcome to those of you following us on the Webcast and in WebEx and we have the moderator ready to feed your input and we're really glad to have you with us.
So I'll give a brief overview of the topic and then introduce how we'll work and get started.
So claims about young people are essential to many Internet Governance discussions. On the opening stage we heard youth and young people mentioned in many different contexts, as innovators, in need of protection, youth as the next generation. We hear these claims a lot in IGF and from this workshop came back two things: One, a frustration some of us felt in previous years that many of those claims are generalizations that don't match with our experience or an evidence base, and the timely publishing by Dayna Boyd who we hoped to have with us but couldn't make it of a list of eight myths that inspired us to think what other myths are there and how can we challenge them. They came from many different sources, some myths because there's a claim with an intuitive appeal that sounds right but when we look at the evidence, it is not so clear-cut or so simple.
Many myths come from a bias in reports and the information we get. We're as human beings likely to tune in and listen to more sensational statistics or reports, and that has a real knock-on effect that that can lead to people researching those more and generating more to be reported and reinforcing myths in negative ways and some come from vested interests to further their own goals. So there's these many different sorts of myths we must challenge and explore.
We hope this can be addressed in a constructive spirit, not seeking to be confrontational but seeking to explore a shared understanding of youth as a key part of Internet Governance discussions, and we hope the transcript and discussions and Twitter chat and anything you want to send to us afterwards can form the basis of a report that we can share with others organizing IG workshops in the future to maybe have some myths that if they are coming up, tell us we have veered off track and we're hoping we can generate positive outcomes.
How will we work is I'll invite each speaker to address one or more myths. Just two or three minutes each to do that. I'll ask them to explain that myth and how they think it should be challenged. We'll do it in two groups, four people first, open the floor for questions on those topics, we'll have another group and some questions to them and then hopefully spend a good bit of time on a group discussion about how we challenge these in a practical constructive way.
So without me talking any longer I'd like to hand over to our panelists -- I have a bit of paper with one minute left written on, 15 seconds left written on and we'll try to keep to time as well as we can in this, although I will give a little extra space as well and have some flexibility.
Our first is -- I'll ask each panelist to do their own introduction because many people wear many hats in the bio. Sheba will be exploring digital natives or digitally naive.
>> SHEBA MOHAMMID: Thank you for coming here after lunch. There was a bit of traffic. I'm Sheba from Trinidad and Tobago, I do sociological research and use -- also the Diplo Foundation, I'll propose something I have seen in an emerging mythology and that is a polarization of youth as either digital native or digital naive.
And I have seen this kind of cropping up now in a dialogue where youth are kind of being thrust to one extreme, either digital native, ubiquitous understanding, or naive and they need to be protected, and I don't think either concept are inherently wrong but it's polarization and how extreme we are being by pigeonholing an experience almost kind of saying that it's either one or the other in every different context.
Some of the instances of dialogue coming up in conversations, for instance, we had a laptop per child type project in a developing country. And I was there when one of the governmental officials doing the plenary session and planning and youth was clearly being only constructed as digital native and the idea was give them the technology, he'll figure it out, we don't need to do any work on the pedagogical systems or educating youth. No dialogue being created there and on the other hand I had an interview with someone from a parenting magazine and she was adamant that youth were only naives and that they needed to be completely controlled, protected, they were spending too much time, social lives being taken up by the Internet.
Once again, there was no dialogue. So what I'm proposing is that we are polarizing youth and seeing them as one or the other in terms of their experiences online then creating a challenge because we are never allowing a situation to understand their experiences in a networking media, we're not really making that distinction, that they can't have different experiences as individuals and different spaces.
And as Internet and technology merge there may be questions so that may be something we can discuss today, thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you, Sheba. Setting the challenge for other parties with two and a half minutes of very good quality. Setting up a dichotomy we hear a lot.
I'll ask Max to introduce to us the myth about the Internet as a free playground.
>> MAX: Thank you very much, I'm Max (off-mic) from Berlin and I'm a media lawyer and journalist from the European News Press, network of young journalists in Europe. Yeah, well, good starting point from naive youth to naive thought. I'll talk about chilling effects to freedom of expression.
The myths are that it is widely understood young people regard the Internet, as Tim said, as a free and anarchic playground which they can do whatever they want and unfold in whichever way they think they want. As we all know, we just had a lunch discussion about Internet addictives, young people spend hours and hours on social network, gaming, and the myth is that young people think it's all free. It's all open and whatever you do, it does not yield any negative consequences.
Be it from law enforcement authorities, companies, employers or just from teachers or parents. The opposite is actually the truth. Internet is everything but all free. It is in fact, yeah, in many parts, a space that is not a free space for freedom of expression and young people understand that and the consequences are to be identified and understood and tackled and that's what we want to discuss here a bit.
Many fear the Internet is under surveillance which leads to serious chilling effects or freedom of expression and democratic participation on the Internet especially on critical political debates, economic and social issues that people want to freely express their opinion on.
That has recently been proven by a very large BBC study carried out 27,000 people surveyed in 26 countries and 49% like half of them also so called like --
(Laughter)
-- self-regarded very democratic countries, 49% think the Internet is not a free space and they avoid free expression on the Internet. In some countries like South Korea it's 70% regarding the Internet is unfree, France is 69%, Kenya is the opposite, fortunately, 73% think it is a free space and those major obstacles -- from youth point of view derives from governmental data retention that makes your future Internet behavior predictable, commercial exploitation and antiquated copyright laws.
So, yeah, what is to be done? Freedom and human rights are being discussed a lot here during the IGF. But this particular focus on youth and chilling effects they have not really been addressed so this is, what we're gonna go here now and we need to stick to the human rights framework that is in place, like Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights implies that chilling effects of freedom of expression needs to be avoided.
So the youth coalition, I believe, can only respond to these chilling effects by raising awareness and shattering these common misconceptions and doing that among policymakers, lawyers, media and civil society, pretty much everyone that is here present at the IGF.
Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: "Chilling effects" in three or four words, what's the impact?
>> MAX: Basically that people stop expressing their opinions freely and in that case on the Internet because they near negative consequences.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you very much. If you would just flip your microphone off that makes sure we give the remote group as good sound as possible. This room can be hard to hear in.
As well others at the back wave if you are having trouble hearing speakers.
Next Keylle Coleman from the U.S. and building on recent work at the U.S.A. IGF young people also discussed this topic of myths and bringing some of that experience and discussion into our debate.
>> KEYLLE COLEMAN: Hello, I'm Keylle Coleman. I am here representing Imagine the Internet from Elon University in the United States.
As a young university student from the U.S. I use the Internet constantly and you know I do struggle as we mentioned earlier with being called a digital native. It's something I mentioned in a panel yesterday, you know, being a digital native does not mean that we know it all. I think it's a common assumption or myth as well. We begin using technology at a young age these days and often don't have an understanding of the risks and dangers associated with it
That is true of privacy which is what I want to talk about today. I think there is a myth that youth don't care about privacy. I don't think that youth don't necessarily -- I think youth do care but at the same time youth don't fully understand what privacy means. Trying to follow my notes here.
I think youth are often seen as irresponsible, online sharing information recklessly and participating in insignificant ways but I don't think we're given enough credit or opportunity. At IGF use this panel was conducted and the 19 to 22-year-olds present concluded that young people do care about privacy online particularly in content that's posted within a public forum. I definitely think we are much more responsible than many think.
But if we were given more of a knowledge of what privacy is and how we can protect ourselves, youth would take more of a personal -- they would be more personally invested in action and expectations would be more reasonable and more easily met. I think education should begin at a young age, increasing literacy from the beginning. Simply blocking or filtering sites on which we may expose too much of ourselves isn't helpful. We're not included in that. Simply telling us not to post this and that is not helpful without telling us why. These are more protective measures which is good but they're placed on us by others. We are not personally invested. They are not empowering measures if that makes sense.
If the why of privacy is shared I think we as young people can become more empowered and invested in taking actions to protect ourselves.
I think it's amazing to see all these young people here from Childnet. They know about these issues, they can have discussions and share with others and they're making their own educated decision business what they are doing online. More of this needs to be in place if we have education what privacy is and how it impacts us then we can go and determine how privacy plays a role in on online lives. We do care but there is a lack of education indication. So it may not seem I'm really challenging the myth we don't care about privacy but I would really like to challenge expectations when it comes to privacy when education that includes what it is, why we need to care and that impact is made a priority. Thanks.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you again for raising another key point in our discussion of youth, specifying the age range we're working with. So often we use this catchall description that could be from youth to 30 or more and it's useful to talk about children, young people, young adults as a separate group with commonalities but with differences when we are discussing youth. Really good to have that specific.
I'll also invite Connor now to talk on privacy from that young person perspective. Still in school system.
>> CONNOR DALBY: In terms of the myth kids don't care about privacy, it's more a lack of awareness and education. Postings, which is absolutely great they sometimes don't think about the consequences that could happen and kind of privacy that's affecting. In terms of settings, I think that when they start and also even when they are on Facebook a lot of time they are using default settings, perfectly okay but it isn't fully protecting them and they might want to adjust it. For a lot of youth like myself it's a bit of a struggle to actually access these settings and change them and I think it's something that needs to be addressed and I think for some solution, when I'll give you an example of my experience. At my school, we had an assembly on privacy, full-on talking about it and they had PowerPoints and screenshots of how to change it and after that, everyone came out going, wow, did I not know that.
I'm going to -- about half my group suddenly changed it from default settings and it seemed like something good to do. Then they could group people together and share privacy together. But also to do with education, yes, sure, we want these settings going but we don't want to, with the methods and tactics, don't wear to scare the -- at the moment a lot of things, unlike things, unlike, sorry, unlike -- but the tactics that some educational people use can be actually quite scaring to giving examples that people have other experiences like if you post this on Facebook this could happen to you and your life could go downwards.
That's the wrong way to go about it. You are scaring youth to not share things they should be sharing, great thing, or stop using the Internet altogether and using this social network altogether.
The best way to go about it is teaching about settings, not trying to scare them too much but teaching them good things that we can improve. That's what I think. Thanks.
>> TIM DAVIES: Connor, thanks for that input, too. We have heard that young people are neither digital natives or naive. We can't generalize. Challenges of whether they understand as a free space or not and whether chilling effects are limited people's expression and freedom and then also questioning ho young people want to work in collaboration.
I'm going to open the floor now for brief questions maybe for ten minutes and then hear from the next group. If you'd like to ask any questions or offer comments please do raise a hand. If you can come to a microphone to speak we'd be very grateful and introduce yourself and you speak.
>> Hello, everybody. I'm from the Congo. I would like to not a question but some points, two points I would like to put out. It's about two facts that I will be talking about which concern my region, my country. It's been said by many that most of the remote countries from Africa, not using Internet. Why? You can see. It will be that Internet is good thing yet people are most now using Internet. Problem is the problem of electricity is still remaining so when you do not have he electricity you can't use your computer. So what is youth like me doing? Using mobile phones and this is the most popular in universities, school, you will see. People every time they have a mobile phone so that's the first part I would like to talk about. There is challenge of electricity but people like me we found a way to get out and stay connected with the world.
Another myth that I would like to break out, it's about people like me, we are using Internet and we are blogging. For instance in my country I'm coming from GCC Congo in central Africa. We are not allowed to talk or to blog about anything because when many of journalists have talked about politics, talking about leaders and they were not happy for that. Many of journalists are been taken to the courts or being imprisoned because they talk wrong about the leaders.
What are we doing?
Now, when we want to blog, we are to care much about what we are talking about. If you want to talk about politics so you will be -- you'll be talking but with -- you are restricted, not talking about politics or leaders. Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you for adding more detail.
I have two comments here. Do you want to both come forward? You have a microphone. Come forward to the microphone afterwards.
>> A big problem that youth face --
>> TIM DAVIES: Please introduce yourself.
>> I'm (off-mic) -- Mohammid. I would in this circumstances like to be considered a youth --
(Laughter)
-- Yeah, seeing as I'm 19 and what not.
But I think a big problem that we have is that in a lot of workshops people are defining privacy for us. Not really understanding what we consider privacy. We might all consider privacy something different. They might say okay you have this data about us and you can't use it. But this data that companies have helps us in a lot of ways. Facebook has been tailor-made to us, it knows how we use its own services. Lot of companies do the same thing.
Do you think there's a balance? Do you think it always has to be so polar riced when people discuss we need to protect data especially something like hobbies. I like baseball, I don't think it's a big deal that Amazon knows that and suggests things having to do with baseball. Do you feel the same way?
>> TIM DAVIES: Would anyone like to respond and then next comment from there.
>> KEYLLE COLEMAN: I can give my opinion. I don't really agree. I understand what you're saying you don't care if Facebook or Amazon knows you like baseball. But I don't know, I think the collection of my personal information does bother me. I want to be able to make the decision for myself when I go on Amazon whether I want to buy a book about baseball or cooking. I don't want my purchases or things I'm doing in that way then kind of impact what I see online. I want to be able to see what I want to see! To feel that information is kind of being filtered in a way to -- that's meant to help me and I understand that, I personally don't really want that help if that makes sense. That's me and my perspective.
>> I have a very short remark. You said Facebook is like tailor-made for us, best usability for all of us in the rooms. Of course it is but also for making a lot of money with our identities, our data and with, like, commercially exploiting what we leave there as personal information. So, yes, tailor-made but for -- as well.
>> It's really interesting what's emerging, not just privacy but the idea there's not a homogeneous view of what privacy is and sometimes we say this is what youth thinks so this is interesting to see there is a diversity and different views.
Then the idea can we empower people and can people choose what's best for them.
>> TIM DAVIES: Key points and I always add whenever there are conversations on privacy there's a brilliant paper, "Taxonomy of Privacy" that really breaks this issue down and says we are talking about many different things. I'll make sure that's in the report and record to look at.
We had another comment from here and then here.
>> I'm -- from Childnet as well. Connor mentioned we get education in the UK but that's not across the board. I wanted to ask Keylle what education there is in the U.S., if it's any different to what we get.
>> KEYLLE COLEMAN: Well, when I was young --
(Laughter)
-- I mean, I am young, when I was much younger than I am now --
(Laughter)
-- the focus in elementary school, I don't know how it kind of transfers but 10, 11, 12, I was learning how to use the Internet. But that's changing and now kids are -- they know how to use it like when they're three years old they are on their parents' iPhones, I'm speaking from my own perspective.
So I didn't receive a lot of education around things like privacy. Issues related to the Internet that are very, very important to the future of it. And so that's why it's awesome to see you guys here.
I think that we're definitely as far as the U.S. is concerned and from what I know, which could be limited, I do feel there is a lack of education indication. I think there's a lot of filtering and blocking and don't do this sort of conversation happening but, again, not conversation that allows young people to become personally invested in the kind of things that they are posing online. That becomes personally invested in sort of what they're doing online. And how that can impact them. Does that make sense, kind of regulating that? Again I'm one person from the states and that could be different now and what they're focusing on. But from what I know, not so much.
>> TIM DAVIES: We were only going to go to the panelists but I'll let Gitte come in.
>> GITTE STALD: Many thousands. More. Well, I think this discussion about privacy goes back to the discussion about digital natures because I think very often when we talk about skills children have, it's practical skills. Parents tend to brag about their five-year-old being able to push the right buttons, wow, my kid knows the same as I do. But that's not being reflective and considering consequences now and in the future. In the future perspective and I think that's one of the things. It's nothing that you can actually -- I don't think you can teach that. You can give good advice on what is good to do now and the rest is actually something that comes with growing up and reflecting about consequences of what you are doing and sharing that information and so on. Part of a long process, nothing that you can just teach.
Give good advice but then the rest comes with age.
>> TIM DAVIES: This panel, I'll take one more question and then hold other questions for the discussion at the end. Sir.
>> Hi. Sammy Mubarek from the technology center. I do have a question but more challenging myth about kids with disability, that they don't use the Internet or Facebook, don't watch YouTube and so forth. On the contrary kids with disabilities depend and rely solely on the Internet as first line of communication and information. Has anybody thought about privacy for kids with disabilities and passing the message or educating them in an accessible manner that is appropriate for them? Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: I'm told I this take one more comment because you've been waiting at the end. No? Yes? Are we any remote comments coming in. None yet. Okay. Last comment for this panel.
>> Thank you very much. Mine is simple. I'm Jonathan, working with -- international and I'm from Uganda, East Africa. Recently we had -- with -- found out most of young people in Africa access from cybercafes and most of them are not safe for young people.
Do you have -- approaching these places where people access, young people access Internet to work with those people so that they make the cafes safe for young people? Found out that these young people face a lot of threats, lot of problems in cafes, they are abused, they find pornographic sites opened and just, you know, they have little knowledge of using computers so they just really feel very cared. Do you have any -- especially in Africa, cafe Internet sites to help young people have privacy?
>> TIM DAVIES: I think in this session that may not be an issue we dig deep into. It's key to remember people are accessing from different places and hopefully myths we explore challenging any generalizations and saying we need to look at these in-depth to understand opportunities people face may be useful but if anyone would like to speak with you afterwards I'm sure we can pick that up. We can maybe pick that up with our next speaker, perfect. I'll give the next speaker a chance to respond to that and then start the next panel. Next speaker panelist is Gbenga is that all young Nigerians are cybercriminals.
>> GBENGA SESAN: Let me respond to that. Two answers, one is the fact a lot of cybercafes are beginning to use, this is a business opportunity. Beginning to use software that allow people when you log on to the system, I know this because I work at them a lot.
A new person comes to the system and tries to log on it doesn't necessarily have to start from where the last person stopped. Everything goes off and they can set by themselves. You may also want to talk to (Speaking off-mic) I can talk to you after and put you in touch with people who work in Uganda on that topic.
I'm sure everyone in this room probably, not even probably, has received an e-mail from somebody who even if they are not Nigerian claim to be the Nigerian prince because we have done the work to trace the source of these e-mails and they are not from Nigeria but I'm not here to discuss that.
But it's so bad, myth is so bad, that almost every technological conference I go to I am forced to talk about cybercrime and it's -- let me give you examples. I'm on a UN committee and I sent a report to the department. I said okay this is the -- for the project we'll do in this, this, and this countries and the ex-ERBGS male was depleted because the person has set up a spam filler that has two things, one, dollar sign, two Nigeria so every one that has a dollar sign is deleted. So many examples I can give. If you live in Nigeria, other countries, you can't experience mobile online payment.
Pay Pal doesn't joke about blocking Nigeria and it's a loose, loose situation because you lose in business, this is 150 million people market which they're beginning to realize and also as a young Nigerian you can't access this.
At the end of a day I want to focus on the fact this myth prevents the world from knowing what exactly is going on with young Nigerians on the Internet. For example, because when the world thinks Nigeria it thinks for cybercrime, then the world doesn't know during the elections, 2011, for the first time in the history of Nigeria and some would say on the continent young Nigerians developed a mobile application to monitor elections regardless of the location where they are from.
Because you always have cybercrime you probably wouldn't know that, about -- just got a major investment from a -- yesterday.
It's a Nigerian company run by a young Nigerian who makes "Nollywood" films, you are probably a fan of those movies. Second largest in the world made available online. The whole idea is the fact that unfortunately because this stereotyping continues you don't get to realize the fact that there are a lot of business partners wait you for you in that country.
I'll end with this. I'm a relatively young Nigerian and I'm not a cybercriminal!
(Laughter)
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you for that.
Our next speakers will be from the Childnet Youth IGF Project and we'll go to Dan first on addiction.
>> DAN SKIPPER: Hi, I'm Dan, I'm with the Childnet group. I'm 15 years old.
The myth I'll talk about is it says social media is addictive. I'm going to get straight into that. The word "addiction" is portrayed in media to be kind of a tactical danger so what the media do is include the word "addictive" and then around the word world of youth and kids and is obvious that a human being will look at that and think this is scary, danger, because the youths and addiction is something that people are kind of biologically wired to be worried about.
After doing research on the topic, I read up about a study carried out in the U.S.A. at the University of Maryland and what they did is they asked their students in class to stay off Facebook for 24 hours, so for 24-hour period no Facebook or any other social media.
By the end of the study they took all the information together and came to a conclusion that some people do experience withdrawal symptoms from not using Facebook. Whether that's not something serious or just something you missed out on an event. Some people figure that maybe there are drawbacks to it.
I think social media is not addictive, just a luxury people enjoy using so you could in a way argue anything is addictive if you are saying social media is addictive.
If you play a sport and you love playing and you play it every chance you get, same with being on social media. If you enjoy social media, you use it as much as you can. I don't think you can say it is an addiction.
However, one quote I found from a psychologist at the Maryland University said that an addiction is "compulsively driven behavior with negative consequences."
So anything that if you withdraw from using something and you experience negative consequences can be classified as an addiction. What they found is that addiction can be found in some people kind of relative to your personality. Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Fantastic. Thank you, Dan.
Next up I'd like to think we have Matthew and I have a question mark for the myth you're going to address.
>> MATTHEW JACKMAN: I'm Matthew Jackman, 16, I come from England and part of the Childnet group. The myth I'll address today is the Internet is the great equalizer.
I think this myth has two very different sides to it. On the other hand you have the aces as a place where anyone can access it. For example, start a business and freedom of expression and gain knowledge. But on the other hand if you want to ask someone where they would find videos they would clearly say YouTube. So here we find almost a monopoly website which control whole sectors.
If by "the great equalizer" it means survival of the fittest, yes, I agree with the myth but that's not what equalizer suggests.
You may consider the Internet to be the opposite. With all information out there we are under the superficial impression that we all know how to use it, however, the truth is that very few know how to get the full potential out of it therefore only benefits select users.
The Internet may present all possibilities and information but not everyone can make judgment on it. It is ridiculous to think because the information is there, everyone can access it and use it and gain full potential. Firstly for me there is no denying I would like this myth to be true that everyone could access and use it equally with the same confidence and knowledge that those who prosper from those who know how to use it gain. However, we would have to ensure the accessibility is available to everyone no matter what language they spoke. Or where they were or who they are and then truly see if it was the great equalizer. So I do believe this myth is fundamentally wrong so my overriding feeling is that the Internet has potential to bring equality but with so many barriers with access, be it disability or affordability and censorship this is incorrect.
Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you, Matthew.
Now to Alannah to see: Is the Internet a dangerous place for all young people?
>> ALANNAH TRAVERS: This may be a bit on the short side. My name is Allanah and I live in England and I'm 15 and I'm obviously here with Childnet.
The myth I'd like to change and argue again is myth five, Internet is a dangerous, dangerous place. This is really misleading and has the potential to block and limit access and can put people off going online. There are dangers as in the real world but I think it is not inherently bad. Doesn't mean it's only dangerous and never good. It's only a dangerous place if you don't know what you are doing with it and you don't know what you're doing.
I think the statement, Internet is a dangerous, dangerous place will influence the type of education that is delivered and the way you tackle dangers can have a negative effect. It could replace the Internet with crossing the road. If you know how to protect yourself you had been able to get the best out of it. Once you've learned how to do with the dangers of the Internet I believe you can use it to its full potential and that's why it to me is not a dangerous place and we should be secure and safe with it once we know what we're doing. Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Really highlighting how these myths lead us into designing education policies or responses that don't support people in the best way possible. Which is a good point to go to the UK, EU kids online, sorry, first one was UK kids, now it's Europeanwide and going even broader at studies so over to --
>> Thank you very much,
>> GITTE STALD: If you don't know about that, many of you do, you can go to EU kids online.org and all reports and things we've been doing are there. Before I go on to the myths I want to talk about doing research and why we are doing it. Many reasons. Good to have a good job and travel around, nice places of course but of course to have evidence-basis for claims we're making about how the world looks in the areas we work. So that's what we've been doing in the kids online we've been interviewing 25,000 children across 25 countries in Europe and wurp of each of their parents in order to compare what the parents think the children do and what the children actually say they do and think about. We do think we have a solid basis of knowledge across Europe and also diversity and similarities but as Tim said in the beginning it is really also coming down to which questions we ask, how we interpret and use finding us afterwards.
Something we are doing is actually to get into the findings we had from kids online and do cross-cultural analysis.
It's an ongoing process to understand what's going on. One of the things that came out of this is that actually we kind of met a number of myths and discussed them and challenged them in our -- at the final conference we had last week Sandra Livingston listed ten different myths quickly. (Speaking off-mic) under 13 don't use social networking sites. Everybody watches porn online. Bullies are -- people you immediate are strangers. All of them. Offline risks migrate online putting a -- in the living room will help (Speaking off-mic) then the final one was I'm going to address more detail because I think it's actually underrepresented very often. The fact we have this myth that everyone when you are child is creating their own content.
To an extent that is true because every time we go on Facebook or send a text message we do but in this context the content means something more creatively, exploring the opportunities and creating some content that could be shared with children and young people and based on your own experiences and understanding of the world but also adding to other people's understanding and we have some numbers and figures in the kids online project sharing that if I could get down to that.
It's very few that are actually doing this actively and among those who did it at very small proportion is doing most of it and most creatively actually posting things, creating little movies and exploring different variations of how to combine text and sound, for example, uploading pictures. So what the majority does is very mundane and not creatively.
Also in terms of the fact that we often think there is not enough good content on the Web or online for children and young people also created by professionals and it is quite important that this is one of the areas that we look much more into so yeah thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Fantastic. You have now had many, many myths, ten more, I would encourage you to look at that list. Hopefully we'll go to Naveed that has been listening and is able to present to us. Is that going to be possible? If you can hear me, the myth of the digital as separate from the real world is one we're really keen to hear your thoughts on.
(Pause.)
(Silence.)
After Naveed we'll hear from Syracuse but Naveed
(Echo)
(Silence)
I think we can hear you now. Naveed, can you talk to us briefly.
(Echo)
>> NAVEED-UL-HAQ: Well, yeah, I work for the regulator office and this debate on the challenging myths to me is quite significant. We talk about developing countries aspect. Here children are educating themselves about the Internet. Parents, teachers, all the other elders they are not that much into Internet stuff or not that much interested about what it can bring as far as permission sharing is concerned. Yeah, this is really challenging for the kids and the growing teens in the developing parts of the world because they, again, use Internet by listening to someone, maybe Facebook and share pictures and things like that.
So if I would like to talk about the myth that I've been able to explore that Tim that -- natives -- I'm sorry I hadn't heard that (Speaking off-mic).
>> TIM DAVIES: Digital world being separate from the real world you had down, separate from the real world.
>> NAVEED-UL-HAQ: Okay, okay. Well yes this is a big myth because generally people think the digital world is separate but it is now indeed. The most important thing that we do in our real world is communicate. How do we communicate with others and with people around us and talk about digital world. Five billion mobile users, so we cannot say that digital world is separate than real world. It is the real world now. It is the world which allows us to do whatever we used to do. You can send SMS, share pictures, you can say hi to anyone, do shopping, pay bills. This relevance of digital world creates the (Speaking off-mic) to have grown so much that it is predicted for the next two or three or four years you will see so much traffic and so many people coming into this space from the developing part and young people that the difference between the real world and digital world will eventually be narrowed totally
So what I say is that the digital world is not at all separate and this is something that goes into mind of the people, again, parents or teachers because they are not much interested or not much used to using Internet or the social networking so when they talk with the kid or teenagers maybe they do not encourage them to do digitally and tell them the significance of this digital space which can help them to not only educate themselves but to retrieve information which could be real use to them.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you so much for that input and really showing how right across the world the digital and physical world are becoming one and the same and we have to treat them in that way in our responses.
What we're going to do now is hopefully open to more questions to our speakers and then seamlessly move into just a general discussion of how can we make sure some of the subtleties are not just discussed in sessions with youth in the title of the IGF but actually inform wider debates.
I had notes here. There were more myths from people who weren't able to travel here and speak in the online background paper, YCIG.org particularly looking at young people's access on sexual and reproductive health online I would encourage you to look at that and we'll point to a report which explores that more Burt we'll go to Syracuse University. We have someone hood like to join the discussion.
>> We will bring up the Syracuse student hub.
>> Keoghan Slattery with Syracuse University. Do share your input.
>> We would like to comment on the social media is addictive as well as being a noneducational for students. At least here in Syracuse we found it's a incredible tool for education and entertainment. Kind of leading towards the hybrid of collaboration with students as well as educational and entertainment side of things. Although it's addictive, I mean, it's addictive because it kind of serves both purposes. You're able to not only connect with peers but again information like today, able to spread the word around campus about the IGF going on today, about the fact we were having a social hub. These sort of things are able to bring awareness from all corners of different areas to people you would never be able to contact.
We are able to follow political leaders, local leaders, our academics leaders and teachers and our schools have been able to profit from the use of social media.
The reason it's so addictive is you can follow your favorite celebrities and listen to your favorite bands and things so what it does is brings all your interests in one place for people to be able to utilize. Hence why it seems addictive it's a centralized location.
>> TIM DAVIES: Great input and really key that so often we have looked at things as technologies. Social network rather than what happens in there as we have said, communication being addictive. I'll let panelists respond and then if anyone wants to speak from the floor do start raising hands and letting me know.
>> I know exactly what you mean. As I said before, an addiction is described as something with negative consequences. But I don't see how you can say that about -- you can say that about smoking and drug addictions, they have negative consequences but the use of the Internet I wouldn't say that's an addiction with negative consequence. What you get out of the Internet is advantageous to each one of us. Educational, Twitter has given us education through feeds and following even someone said on Twitter I just seen it they said it's great to me I learn everything, even Barack Obama is on Twitter. So I know what you mean. Just thought I'd give you that input.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Just had on the Twitter feed people sharing content, document on youth and privacy -- in Spanish so hopefully as we -- I'll get a Spanish speaker to help me make sure to include that. Anyone else from the panel like to respond or take questions?
>> Really good point that Keoghan Slattery made. Because actually the Internet is all your favorite things in one place. When your favorite things change you just add another thing. It's not addiction, just having a really fun time kind of thing. Though was a really good point. Having all your favorite things in one place. Who wouldn't want to be on that?
>> TIM DAVIES: Fantastic. We heard about the myths about criminality, addiction, Internet as equalizer and about evidence and the important of evidence. For the next five minutes maybe if anybody has direct comments to the panelists.
>> I actually have a question for the British and also the Americans. The first question --
(Laughter)
-- the youth I mean to be more precise. I'm Priscilla from UNICEF. I would like -- UNICEF New York. My question is following events that happened in London and surroundings in England with the riots and decision of the government to block Blackberry, BBM, I would like your opinion as a young person about this and how do you think BBM and social media played a role in the riots if you want to call it riots or protests or whatever you think is best and also my second question would be how do you also see the role of social media in some of the -- some people call it evolutions but things that happened in Tunisia and Egypt. How do you see the role in these two different regions of the world?
>> TIM DAVIES: Do you want to respond to that from there? Key questions on social media and the way government immediately talked. We had good myth-busting if I just add around initially -- then the realization it was closed Blackberry and we have to look below headlines to see what was really going on and study in-depth and good to (Speaking off-mic) initial response about blocking.
>> Hi I'm Alex from Childnet. Very easy to blame social media for these things and it's fantastic, I think, UK government stepped away from the immediate blocking and of course they are being used because their methods of rapid communication. Also they're methods of rapid communication to learn of where dangers lie, police services, they could keep in touch with what was going on, trying to block the BBM thing. Again people were using it. You can't generalize it about it being negative situation there. So social media is a really difficult concept but I think it's very important we actually allow some kind of liberal is many to continue with these services at times even of unrest. Once you start actively blocking these services then again it's going to cause a lot more problems.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Other questions?
Yes.
>> I'm -- (unintelligible) -- from Childnet. I'd like to address social media in relation to the riots. It happened in England in various cities in England and social media was used as a means I believe of communicating because it's the easiest way for people to communicate with each other. Back when riots were going on, antipoll tax riots in England and Scotland phone trees were used. That was the easiest method of communication and then if you wanted to start a riot you would have a lot of people you would phone and would all be available to sort of -- social media nowadays is only used to facilitate this more easily. Before social media came about, there was always other methods of contacting people if rioting began. Underground papers and things like that that would be passed around and gather people together but social media in relation to the riots in England was definitely just the newest way and the quickest way of getting all these people together in the same place.
>> TIM DAVIES: Comment from Naveed as well. Do a search for Twitter cleanup because my experience (Speaking off-mic) students getting together to clean up the day after by Twitter and far more active than organizing to riot. Naveed, we are able to hear from you.
>> NAVEED-UL-HAQ: Yes, thank you, Tim. I would add the impact of social media, there was a question about what happened in Egypt recently when the Internet battles and Germany (Speaking off-mic) I was told there were people having small (Speaking off-mic) thank you, Facebook, and social media really made an impact to bring the revolution from communities in order to make their voice heard and gather the community. That was a very important impact of social media tools that was observed in Egypt that helped the community to be together and I remember a joke that was on one of the websites which said to President Mubarek that “Egypt has de-friended you.” This shows a good underlying power of social media as far as community gathering, freedom of expression, bringing (Speaking off-mic) together. Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you, Naveed.
Max, did you want to come in there as well?
>> MAX: Yeah, just want to briefly comment on that. Social media use and the riots in England and same on the Arab Spring and how social media was used there. The media was not the problem, just takes us directly back to the human rights dime mention of what we're discussing and all these rights sometimes they are called digital rights. Connected to digital citizenship. They interconnect. The right to access also during riots, during the Arab Spring. The right to having anonymity and privacy to be able to freely he can press yourself and plan riots and express your opinion and so on. If you don't have this right to anonymity you cannot do this. If you fear this is limited, Facebook gives you data to the courts, to the police authorities you will not be able to foster democracy on that way anymore on the streets.
This is where human rights and the different human rights, social media and what is happening right now primarily in the Arab world but also in England come together somehow.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Hopefully at this point are we any other remote participation at this stage?
Not at the moment
We can shift now hopefully. Carry on asking questions directly to the panelists and shift to ask: How do we challenge these myths in the broader Internet Governance debate?
I think virtually all I've heard said from panels here at the IGF in the past if we were to go through the transcript archives we'd hear phrases used sometimes intentionally, sometimes offhand and yet as we heard that does shape responses and policies. So it's a big challenge to move from a discussion in this room to a broader contribution to the IG didn't so I'd really welcome questions, comments, reflections and thoughts. We have a speaker from the back there. Do you want to come forward to a microphone and maybe collect 24 or three points at a time. Then come to net mission and come to get each to respond to those first do introduce yourselves when you speak.
>> Thank you. My name is Kenneth Zimbaya from Tanzania Union of Journalists. One way of changing this is first we need to understand the genesis of these lies and that requires us to probably dig deep.
We might find when we dig deep that we'll not have one answer fits all what might work in developed countries might not work in developing countries. It might be also requiring us to see how are we involving, like, young people themselves and those people who are, say, spreading these myths but also important that when you are looking at the genesis it might be people, players in this, asking themselves what do us as young people have we -- to create these myths and what do we have to do to create these myths come to an end? Also it would be we might find those people who are creating these myths or holding these myths are asking themselves what do we have to do to understand young people.
This might need bringing together different stakeholders and discussing like you are doing here probably but a key thing is understanding the Genesis of this. Is it that young people are been abusing the rights to these things or not or just because there's a generation which doesn't understand the benefits of Internet. Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Does remind me of Sharm El Sheikh sitting adults and young people down. That power of that deep dialogue there. We had another comment or question here.
>> I'm one of ambassadors and I'm 14. I just heard from the panelist that -- Internet is actually free but it's not. So because there's censorship but I think it's actually necessary because not everyone is behaving under Internet appropriately. I think censorship is actually necessary because for the purpose to protect youth themselves from being exposed to pornographic content.
Also I think the fundamental principle of freedom is that actually relies on a discipline under control of everyone and therefore we should inform the children, concept of digital citizenship. I also think because freedom is not free it actually requires everyone's cooperation and discipline. When not everyone is doing the right thing it is hard for us to completely accept expect the Internet to be free.
>> TIM DAVIES: I'll come to some panelists first.
>> GITTE STALD: It's very important to remind ourselves constantly about the different context we work in. Developing and developed countries, obvious that there are different situations and conditions and same actually goes when we look at Europe. We need to look into those differences before we can see what -- make plans for what we actually are going to do. Actually want to return to the question that Tim raced about how to move from these discussions and these talks to agencies and wanted to ask you from the Childnet representatives. You are very well spoken and well educated and you know a lot about these things but when I'm talking to people out there and I've talked to many hundred of people over the years, when you talk to them, it's also part of every day life is kind of perhaps -- there's a lot of pace, moving forward, doing things, not about kind of reflecting on the consequences and so on.
(Speaking off-mic) not the most important factors in terms of getting good advice, talking about how to become wiser about these things so have you any thoughts about how we could actually move forward?
What more on getting peer-to-peer information? How can we deal with this when we actually want to do something?
>> TIM DAVIES: Hold that question and add that to our stack.
>> The word "censorship" always triggers something in me. It may be a play on words but there's a huge, huge difference between censoring and guiding people. When you say you don't want people to go to online websites and check porn and you censor, you're not helping. They will go somewhere else to get it done. Maybe it's a play on words but what censor ships always, always, always -- that's exactly what happened when Egypt shut down the Internet earlier in the year. You can't, you can't control people. We're human beings and, like water, we will find the path of least resistance.
>> CONNOR DALBY: In response to what was said about censorship. In terms of youth, censorship we do need censorship, we explore a lot but I think to a certain age or something we need to have censorship to a certain age so when we leave to the real world there won't be that censorship and we can be trusted and because we're so well educated about -- if we get so well educated about what shouldn't be going on we should have the full education to use the Internet safely and with proper use so as a conclusion response to that, we should be taught how to use the Internet and what is proper and appropriate so that way the government and things like people won't need to censor things because they have that trust from the education.
>> TIM DAVIES: We had comment from the back there.
>> Can I just clarify something?
>> TIM DAVIES: Of course.
>> We've been talking a lot but when Connor and I were talking earlier about censorship we were talk about educational filtering. Is that what you meant?
Oh we mean censorship in this term as a response, talking about blocking in schools and educational capacity. Thank you.
>> TIM DAVIES: For you that that clarification.
>> I'm (Speaking off-mic) representing electronic friends of Finland here. Clarify terminology just in case with censorship we can mean preemptive and moderation that happens afterwards. With effective, it can be manual or automatic.
Automatic systems that happen in schools they are usually -- we run into very big problems. Moderation that for example you need to be approved for content before you can send it, that's -- for think service they can choose whatever they do. That's something that we probably had guidance we're after, that might be that. But afterwards, that is also guidance but with censorship it sounds too harsh but we probably aren't talking about with censorship like government not allowing some specific things to work. Preemptively without, yeah, sounds harsh.
>> TIM DAVIES: I don't want us to get sidetracked into censorship. I want to keep thinking about how we challenge myths so if you have a thought on how myth-busting can support us, please continue to bring those in. I'm sure we can are a deeper discussion about censorship later on.
A comment from over here.
>> I'm just changing the subject to privacy again. Just about the privacy things and young people don't care about privacy and we just got that not confirmed, that you do care, maybe you would need more education, that would be nice, I think another thing is we need to see it from a youth perspective. I think -- what is the name over there -- Ali touched upon it when he said that it's more a matter of that there are so many fantastic things out there, sometimes as skeeter mentions over, things go very fast and it's very fun as Alannah said and we like to use media and online technologies.
Maybe it's not about privacy and we care and not care but about how we use it we need to be honest about that, we like services, we like Facebook, we like Gmail, we like Google, so maybe the question is how we are going to handle these challenges, taking advantage of them and the same time taking care of ourselves.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Do we have a remote input coming now?
(Pause.)
I think we should be able to hear you.
>> Can you hear us now?
>> TIM DAVIES: We can hear you.
>> What we're seeing I think is actually the myth with students actually digital natives, we're natives in that we have grown up with computers and kind of the tech aspect, monitors, mouses but they don't understand as much and I think it's where the myth hits home is we are not native to security settings and software and knowing and understanding the ins and outs of software.
Things like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, all those have very in-depth security settings that can be shared and what students don't understand is what that information is. We do have a different definition of what's important to us to protect, maybe than our parents do, which is where we get this myth that student don't care about privacy. We have definitely different definition of what is important to keep private and what is important and okay to have public.
I think with the digital native, digital native kind of difference there we see that there is also discrepancy between access as well. We believe that access is what needs to be focused on more. What you can access, what other people can see and access is more important to us whereas to our parents it's what we put out there. There needs to be more education for students, not just assuming we know what we are doing but double-checking and showing there's more to computers and Internet than just going online. Lot more to think about and repercussions and ripple effect as you go online and participate among forums, media sites.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Seems to my you are saying we should reframe some of the debates from how they are normally framed around privacy to type other terms within them like access, visibility of content. That's an interesting avenue to explore how we can reframe the terms of these. I have a comment here and here.
>> I want to build off of a few things I have noticed from this. One that a myth about youth is like might be we have a general consensus just because we're youth and like adults have a general consensus, tell them to someone who's advocating for open source versus intellectual property.
So I think that might be a myth to look at. Off that, yeah, I think we do need to understand a lot more about the software, especially when we say we want privacy. Everyone wants privacy but again they might deal with it another way but also you have to know your tradeoff. If you want complete privacy you might be sacrificing a lot of cloud services that we all like to have. Knowing that is kind of a big deal.
It's something we should know if we want to argue this point. So yeah I think you made a really good point where we say we want privacy because it sounds really good but we also want other things and are to say okay what is more important, the fact we use the service and it's not perfect?
We can't be completely idealists about this. That's my main points.
>> (Speaking off-mic) I just want to know what members of the panel think. It was -- because children are grown up or young people have grown up with this technology to a greater extent we are less enchanted by it than some adults may be. Not using generalization but saying or asking what the panel thinks about it. As a young person I am enchanted to a degree by digital technology but just like to see what you think about that.
>> TIM DAVIES: To Connor on the panel.
>> In terms of youth being digital natives, I think as new technology comes out we adapt to it and because we almost enhance it more and but not to say that adults don't use it as well because we're learning from them and learning how to adapt to our technology and understanding from them. We're on a learning curve. As youth we are quite interested in experimental. We'll apply this technology and just go for it and so adapt to it quicker and be less hesitant about it. That's what I think.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you.
>> I don't mean to jump back a bit, incorporate digital natives. It's a point I think Kenneth made or Kenny made about where these myths came from. The myths are here because there's an underlying truth. If I look through this list and look at the first one, digital is separate from the real world, there is an underlying truth to me personally. The Internet is more of a transactional place rather than narrative. I'm a different person on the Internet than face-to-face. This ties into the second myth, social media makes kids deceptive. I am different online -- kind of what I'm putting online is kind of when I'm talking face-to-face I know who I am talking to, who I am dressing whereas online this is uncertainty and deceptive and cautious are quite close. Also again tying all these myths together and kids don't care about privacy.
They do care, it's just they don't are the initial understanding and the myth has come about, this underlying truth that kids don't care about privacy is that obviously things would have gone wrong, it's easy to label kids as, oh, they're young, they haven't got this right. They don't care about privacy. I was just interested and hope I have kind of touched on it with KENET. These myths do have an underlying truth.
I'm also interested that some of these myths aren't necessarily bad. I don't have a problem with that. I know it's becoming ever smaller the gap between them but some of these could be true and, yeah.
>> TIM DAVIES: Really key points there that maybe we're talking about the same things with different language or terminology with a mall bit of education on both sides we can have a better dialogue and also generalizations, some comments on Twitter touching on the nature of generalizations and I've been reflecting for myself how to do a global governance debate without using them. That's a big challenge to us when we are trying to have a global conversation but the pest physician ti has been set by so many where we need to get to. We need to think about how we set up our discussion examines our debates. I have a few more comments I'll take and then draw to the end of the session. In my last round I'll discriminate terribly and not going to allow too many comments from young people which could get me in trouble afterwards but we'll go around the room for anyone who maybe isn't in the front panel.
>> Yes. Thank you. Regarding social media tools and how people use them, throughout history people had tools to communicate, tools to eat, tools to transport. So if you use these tools in a bad way it will give you a bad result. Good way, good result. So the issue is educating people how to use these tools. What's the appropriate way. Yes, keep the knife away from children. Then the child or youth won't want to use that tool because they know the dangers of it. I think with social censorship of any kind, it's mainly if I knew why I was being blocked from this content I'll respect that decision more because we have the mentality of if I'm blocked then it's more collusive. If I get through I'll have an edge on other people. That's the kind of thing that keeps people going on why they this get to banned content.
So if the policymakers do actually put more emphasis on educating people and why this content is being blocked even if it's website-specific or content-specific. If I go to a site named supercars.com and it's not -- it's blocked. If it gives a message why it would be more beneficial.
>> TIM DAVIES: Next to the lady in the purple has been wanting to speak. Come forward and the two gentlemen, come forward and be ready to speak and we'll have some brief input as we're coming towards the end.
>> I just wanted to pick up on something you said earlier. I'm Laura Hutchison in the UK, talked earlier about generalization.
I want to pick up on points made about privacy and education. Connor's points about his story about the school assembly we actually had a very similar session at my place of work. None of us are youth, we're all considerably older. I'd like to ask the panelists whether the privacy and education aspects mentioned today, are they specific to youth users or if all new Internet users are facing the same problems.
>> TIM DAVIES: Very good comment. Maybe we push on to youth things that are more general and we may be need to be -- can I come to you.
>> Thank you, Kenny. I think in terms of the proposing solution, just I don't know what I said, I think young people themselves are a bigger role to play. If, say, we start having responsibly when we are using Internet the result of that will be seen by parents. You'll be seeing that the advantage of us accessing Internet because at the end of the day like people have the Internet has been a catalyst for development. It has helped young people in a lot of things like educationalwise. If we capitalize and shout louder on the benefits and we'll get trust and be sported and the minds will change themselves. Thank you.
>> Hello. I'm -- from actually the Congo like my brother over there, but I study in Kenya.
Here is my issue. We are all here talking about policies, security, but have we actually thought about the real behavior of those youth we're talking about. Because we all know at 16-year-olds a kid there is like all of us here has a time in the life where they don't want to listen to rules, they just want to do what they want to do. Citing those policies whereby you tell to somebody or security tell somebody I'm not allowed to watch this, but the key as always in someone who is 16 was want to know I've heard smoking weed does this to you, so I really want to know how it feels. You go test it the first year, second year it's like, whatever, I'm 20 now, this thing is already past. I've done it in my life.
Just say like let's say my (Speaking off-mic) over here, say something which is amazing like responsibility. How do you expect someone who is 15, actually I was talking to some of them, they had to come here with someone as in to have responsibility because they are still young so let's just look at it in this point.
>> Thank you.
>> I'm 16, and I have to go, I want to know things but what are the things available for me? Good things? Bad things? How do I know?
So as we're here to teach them this thing called ICT, teaching them about computers and tough like that.
>> TIM DAVIES: If we can close, then.
>> Oh, sorry.
>> TIM DAVIES: We're running short on time.
>> Okay, okay, okay, thank you very much.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. I think that's certainly something I'd be interested to pick up a discussion because my experience has been when we give responsibility, people are able to take that on working with young children, young people and young adults has been we can have that approach but I'd like to end with our panelists who have any brief responses, particularly on this how do we get to this deeper dive of real deep understanding that generalizations don't work and help us to better policy but sometimes may have some truth in them. What this we be doing and what would you like to share?
>> Three quick things. One is a report from the session which is going to be online and that is a way of doing that. Other thing is a lot of young people who care about this issue use Twitter Facebook other social media channels. They can begin to say because if there's darkness in the room you can keep talking about it. If you flip a twitch the light can come on. Talk about correct things. The third thing is maybe this comes back to you actually in terms of getting this agenda to the central agenda of the IGF possible. As soon as possible.
>> GITTE STALD: Yes, thank you, I was just thinking one thing about this the 16-year-old wants to challenge everything and that is quite true to some degree across the world. But for instance data shows that children across Europe between 9 and 15 to a large degree actually trust their parents and listen to them and actually are willing to get good advice from parents and also to a large-degree think their parents are quite the techwise depending which country you come from of course and what the history is.
We shouldn't forget this dialogue between children and parents because it starts when you are born even if parents may not have Internet access, this kind of upbringing and good social behavior starts when you are born. We shouldn't forget there is this trust relationship between children and parents that children would not admit and parents don't believe exists.
>> TIM DAVIES: Fantastic. Any other panelist wants to respond?
>> CONNOR DALBY: I've noticed a lot throughout all the people, this is to everyone really. This has been touched on a lot. It's about the thing about being educated and being -- knowing what to do with dangers and privacy. Just all about having, knowing what to do and being like you said having your parents telling you what to do. Having that influence on you, to use the Internet safely and to the best effect.
>> TIM DAVIES: Thank you. Quick or comment from Peru Twitter account saying if social media isn't an equalizer, how do we think it can be used to help reduce discrimination?
Last comments from Max and Sheba.
>> MAX: Youth issues was -- we are specifically discussing youth issues? No, we are not, just a young point of view on the Internet and recent developments. Youth perspective but not a specific youth issue I guess.
Many young people are a lot better and more aware and professional and many Internet matters, specifically social media than elderly people. This is everywhere to be seen.
Second point, make the virtual world discussion be real and in your own environment. Everyone can do capacity building in the end if you have knowledge to share. You can do that. And this is what we should do and if I say make the virtual world a real world it in fact is the real world. What I said before it's not a digital citizenship, it's real citizenship and real democracy and if this youth coalition can do a little bit on this, and raise more awareness and be a little annoying to people, reminding them of these things we can have success I believe.
>> It's important to really engage youth, not just construct them as an other, it's simplistic to say we make these generalizations but if we are really open we need to listen more before we come up, challenge going myths really fosters but start listening, creating that open dialogue because youth are as much stakeholders in their own futures. Using social media to do it when you go home and local context do it, sustain that dialogue. Media literacy is important and empowering youth to be able to make the right choices and decide what's right for them. That's an important step I believe.
>> TIM DAVIES: We're going to close the session there. I'm going to say one key point. Don't bracket out the young people you've heard.
I often see people are in these brackets, they're the literate ones, there's a key challenge that the young people have come from many different backgrounds, gone through some induction training to be able to speak at this event, but draw on very diverse life experiences, so we haven't bracketed out those voices.
To end the panel, it seems strange to say I hope we're ending a little more uncertain about Internet Governance, but I think if next year we come back into these debates or take our regional debates a little more uncertainty about claims about young people and spend a little more time digging into those it will be a very good thing.
I'll end with thanks to all those who helped this workshop take place. We have much support from different partners supporting the initial workshop. They'll all be listed on the final report.
Thank you to all of you who have taken part. Thanks to our remote participants, too.
(Applause)
(Session concluded)