Over the years, we have made significant investments in building various age-appropriate measures and tools to ensure young people, women, parents and children continue to feel safe online. As part of Safer Internet Day, we are taking another step in strengthening our commitment to people’s safety.
We are partnering with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for the G20 Stay Safe Online Campaign, in which we will create and share helpful resources in multiple Indian languages about how to stay safe online. The resources will cover themes such as tackling online frauds, how to report harmful content, tips to keep yourself safe when interacting online and more. India is at the cusp of becoming a $1 trillion digital economy and at the time when India is holding the G20 presidency, this strategic partnership will not only support and equip the existing internet users but will also be beneficial for the rapidly increasing amount of new internet users in India.
Under PM Modi’s vision of India’s Techade, we are witnessing rapid digital adoption and with this growth, there is a need to create easy to access tools and resources to protect users from increasing cyber crimes. We, at MeitY, have designed a Stay Safe online campaign in this year of India’s G20 Presidency and we are glad that tech companies like Meta are taking a lead in supporting the government’s vision of building an inclusive digital space which is free of severe online threats.
Akash Tripathi, CEO, MyGov
We are also launching a #DigitalSuraksha campaign that builds on our efforts to offer a safer and inclusive internet to everyone. The first phase of #DigitalSuraksha includes a partnership with Delhi Police to provide digital literacy to users in the city. Its current phase also includes measures to enable digital education and literacy across youth well-being, child safety, tackling misinformation and overall education about various safety tools and resources available across our technologies.
The G20 Presidency opens up a great opportunity for India to design and create an ever-inclusive Internet model for the world, and we are excited to partner with the Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology in this endeavor. Creating a $1 trillion digital economy requires an ecosystem that is safe and empowering and we will support the government’s campaign by providing users with education, tools and resources to protect themselves in this rapidly evolving digital world.
Head, Public Policy, Instagram and Policy Programs, Facebook India (Meta)
Providing Digital Literacy
Law enforcement agencies are a critical partner in ensuring online safety. As part of the #DigitalSuraksha campaign, we will work with the Delhi Police on a two-month-long programme to provide digital literacy to 10,000 students across various Delhi schools and colleges on topics such as cyber bullying, sextortion, trolling, identity theft and how to safely browse the internet. Furthermore, we will jointly build resources with the help of Delhi Police to educate people about protecting themselves against online and digital scams. We are also providing training to Delhi Police personnel on our various safety tools.
We have also launched a Digital Nagrik Pledge encouraging people across India to become responsible digital citizens (Nagriks). This initiative builds on our partnership with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide a digital citizenship course to 10 million students and 1 million teachers. The Digital Nagrik Pledge will further support the Indian Government’s objective to ensure an open, safe, trusted and accountable internet. The goal of the program will be to get one million people to pledge and become safe digital citizens over the next one year. ((Updated on February 08, 2023 at 2:10pm IST to add detail on our approach.)
Building Consumer Awareness
To further emphasize the critical importance of educating people on digital safety, we are also introducing a series of consumer awareness initiatives on the tools and resources available for people to stay safe.
Building on the partnership with Delhi Police, for one month, we are going to wrap one train on Delhi Metro’s Yellow line to help educate people about safety tools available for them across our apps. Commuters will be redirected to these safety tools through a QR code.
We are also launching a new campaign, called “Help protect children. Don’t Share. Don’t Comment. Report,” that prevents the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and encourages people to report such content instead. The campaign will educate people on the harm CSAM causes, and the impact it has on victims. It will encourage anyone who sees harmful videos and images of children to protect the victim by reporting it immediately to Facebook.
This year’s theme for Safer Internet Day underlines a crucial aspect of supporting young children by having conversations about life in the online world. With an aim to support and encourage meaningful conversations between parents and children around critical topics like use of social media, mental health and digital wellbeing, we are partnering with Yuvaa to launch UnGap.
A series of six episodes, UnGap is a chat show featuring pairings of well-known parents and children that includes actor Sheeba Chaddha and daughter Noor, actor Ahsaas Channa and mother Kulbir Badesron, comedian Abhishek Kumar and father Sundar Baalaji and entrepreneur Roshan Abbas and daughter Ayatal Abbas, among others.
Additionally, we also launched an awareness campaign focusing on “tips for tackling misinformation” with Yuvaa. Available in Hinglish, the campaign features 15-second videos featuring six simple tips and tricks on tackling and identifying misinformation.
We will continue to add more initiatives to the #DigitalSuraksha campaign over the course of the year. They will be geared toward reaching a larger audience through education, creating more awareness and advancing India’s agenda of digital inclusion and growth.