Samsung UK’s Chief Customer Officer Talks Online Safety Ahead of Safer Internet Day 2025

Ahead of Safer Internet Day 2025 tomorrow, Samsung UK’s newsroom team sat down with Deborah Honig, Chief Customer Officer for Samsung UK, to talk about the importance of online safety and what Samsung is doing to support parents to help make the online world a safer place for young people.

Q) Thanks for joining us today, Deborah, can you tell us why Safer Internet Day is such an important day to mark for Samsung, and what it means to you personally?

Days like Safer Internet Day are really crucial to help give all parents and guardians a platform to continue to talk openly about helping our children stay safe online and also share their experiences in how to achieve this. This is an ongoing area of focus for us, but marked days are vital for growing awareness on important topics. As a parent with a young son, my priority is his safety, both off and online. As he gets older and learns how to navigate the online world, it’s important that I can help equip him to be confident, secure and knowledgeable when accessing new technologies.

Q) What is Samsung’s role, as a device manufacturer, in helping combat the growing issue of keeping young people safe online?

We have a shared responsibility with all invested stakeholders to help combat this problem. We are now in our eighth year of supporting Safer Internet Day and have partnered with Internet Matters since 2019, creating vital resources to help parents and children. We need to keep these relationships strong and work together on projects that shine a light on online safety. This won’t be solved by any one organisation or campaign alone. We must collaborate to help inspire and enable parents and guardians to keep having the most important of conversations with their children, especially as we see how prevalent social media is in today’s society.

We want all families who use our devices and services to be able to understand the tools and resources available to them, helping them to set positive boundaries and measures they feel can be effective. We often say that our kids appear more tech-savvy than we are, but learning together can really help everyone in the family dynamic to understand the importance and dangers of online safety.

Q) Internet Matters does a huge amount of work on this issue, how important is this partnership to Samsung?

It really is critical to work alongside incredible organisations like Internet Matters and try to tackle the online safety issue collaboratively. For example, in 2023, we launched the ‘Online Together Project’ with Internet Matters, where we designed a teaching module tool to educate on key topics such as online hate, giving families practical advice and encouraging more open conversations between parents and children. We are proud of the resources created and we wanted to highlight that this type of conversation should always be a two-way, open dialogue.

I certainly want my son to be able to have those conversations with me and share his views so we can set boundaries together, talk about safety and security openly, and develop a better way forward that builds trust and honesty as he gets older and inevitably has more access to the online world.

Our work with Internet Matters has been critical to enhancing our own understanding of how we should not only collectively work together but also how we face into this issue as a manufacturer that has a responsibility to ensure its product features reflect the needs of parents and guardians. When they take that first step of introducing their children to new technology and the internet, we hope to enable them to do so armed with as much knowledge and expertise as we can provide. We design our products with safety and security as a critical priority and we take pride in that.

Q) What plans do Samsung have to mark Safer Internet Day this year?

I think it’s important to say that we have made a huge amount of progress already – from a device manufacturer perspective, we want to listen to our customers on this issue and address their concerns. You will all be aware over the last year that there has been an increased focus on this issue from key stakeholders – the Government, media and online safety parent campaigners – to champion the need to do more and push more on this issue, and we have taken part in many constructive debates and discussions.

We’re doing this by using our communication channels to help raise awareness on the parental controls and safety settings available across Samsung’s products. We are also providing free online safety resources for teachers to use in schools through our Solve for Tomorrow Next Gen programme. Next Gen this year is aimed at 11-15 year olds, focusing on AI for secondary school teachers to help students explore the benefits and challenges of AI and better understand how to use AI responsibly.

This year, we are also raising awareness of Safer Internet Day and the existing Samsung tools & resources available to our customers through our brand and marketing channels, in-store and on the large format Piccadilly Lights digital screen in London. We encourage people to check out our latest online safety guides and videos available on Samsung.com that will address the need for better and more simpler education for parents, guardians and young children.

We are also inviting people to register for our ‘Let’s Talk Online Safety’ Panel discussion event on the 18^th March, hosted at Samsung KX, to continue the momentum and conversation beyond tomorrow. One of our brilliant ambassadors, Fearne Cotton, will be holding a panel discussion where we will be exploring the challenges that we know young people face online and the role we can all play in supporting them.

Q) Finally Deborah, what is your message to our customers about our future ambitions to help tackle this issue?

I think we have to understand that the work should never be done. We know that this is a critical moment in time where this issue has never been more important in the eyes of so many people. We are open to working with the Government, our partners and stakeholders, through our role within our Tech UK industry body, on initiatives that will really engage customers and have the reach and impact that creates meaningful conversations.

We champion and encourage these conversations all year-round through our interactions with our customers, but also crucially through our educational initiatives, encouraging early conversations about responsible use of technology. It really is a long-term journey that we’re committed to, but there is still a lot work ahead of us, to help tackle online safety successfully.

To attend our ‘Let’s Talk Online Safety’ Panel Event at Samsung KX, on Tuesday 18^th March at 5.30pm, please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lets-talk-online-safety-hosted-by-fearne-cotton-tickets-1234746994499?aff=oddtdtcreator

To learn more about Safer Internet Day, please go to: https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2025