HYDERABAD: Recently, with the support of Google India along with the department of school education, govt. of Telangana and T-SAT, students across 6,000 schools in Telangana were introduced to the varied facets of internet safety with customised video training modules. The training covered information and safe practices on how to become good and responsible digital citizens, including the social, ethical and legal aspects of Internet safety.
Google India’s Trust and Safety director Sunita Mohanty speaks to Hyderabad Express on the initiatives taken by Google to improve child safety online. Edited excerpts:
What is ‘Digital Citizenship’ all about? How does it empower youth?
Digital citizenship is all about helping create a positive online experience for kids and young adults. We drive many programmes to help kids become responsible digital citizens, while also staying safe on the internet. We empower children with education and resources to become confident explorers of the web with helpful guidance and tips on how to stay safe.
We have also created a curriculum for teachers, so that they can help students and kids learn all about digital citizenship in their classrooms. Through our course integration with NCERT, we aim to catch children young and teach them the essentials of staying safe, while exploring the online world.
We read news of youngsters being addicted to popular video-sharing platforms and performing dangerous stunts. What steps is Google taking to address this issue?
Content that misleads or endangers children is abhorrent and unacceptable to us. Over the last few months, we’ve taken deliberate steps to tackle many of the emerging challenges around family content on YouTube. Moreover, for kids under 13, we have built YouTube Kids, specifically to ensure that children would have an age-appropriate experience on YouTube.
We work to ensure the videos in YouTube Kids are family-friendly and take feedback very seriously. We appreciate people drawing problematic content to our attention, and make it possible for anyone to flag a video. Flagged videos are manually reviewed 24/7 and any video that doesn’t belong in the app is removed.
