Engl. transl.: How children (10-18) experienced online risks during the Covid-19 lockdown - Spring 2020

Covid-19 pandemic impacted the lives of most children in Europe dramatically. The lockdown affecting most European countries in spring 2020 saw the sudden shift of most children's activities into the digital world. Since then, children's schooling, leisure time, social contacts, home life have mostly been conducted at home via digital media. Embracing new tools and services and spending several hours per day online changed dramatically daily schedules. The online world offers opportunities and new possibilities, substituting face-to-face interactions. However, it opens the door to well-known online risks (inappropriate content, overuse, cyberbullying, cyberhate, disinformation, misuse of personal data, cyber-risks, etc.) This report provides a snapshot of how children across Europe perceived and experienced different known online risks during the Covid-19 spring lockdown in eleven countries, and which steps parents and children took to mitigate and cope with these risks. In particular, changes that occurred in children’s online risk experiences during the Covid-lockdown, compared to the situation before the crisis, were identified.

Disinformation is the experience that children felt encountering and reported the most (75%) and during lockdown, more than a third (37%) felt an increase of that experience. ● Hate-speech is the second risk that children most reported (60%) and more than a quarter (28%) reported to have seen an increase of hate messages that attack certain groups or individuals (e.g people of different colour, religion, nationality or sexuality) ● Violent or gory content follows, with more than half of children (55%) reporting to have already seen gory or violent images online such as hurting other people or animals, for example. A quarter of children (21%) stated a noticeable increase of this type of experience during the lockdown compared to the previous period. ● Self-harm content shows lower figures. Nearly half of children (45%) declared having already seen people talk about or show ways for physically harming or hurting themselves. Nearly a fifth (18%) reported an increase of this type of experience during lockdown. ● The cybersecurity risk of using a device that suffered from a virus or a spyware has been relayed by nearly half of the young users (44%), a sixth (14%) noticed an increase of the phenomenon during lockdown. ● The use of personal data in a way respondents did not like, the misuse of personal passwords, the use of personal information with hurtful consequences were declared as a personal experience by nearly a third of the respondents (respectively 29%, 29% and 27%). More than 1 out of ten children reported an increase of this experience during the lockdown (respectively 13%, 13% and 12%)