Samsung Electronics Co. (UK) Ltd and online safety partner Internet Matters, welcomed students and their parents from Frank Barnes School for Deaf children, to join a free online safety workshop at Samsung KX. The workshop’s core focus this year was on AI, educating the students and their families on how to use AI safely and responsibly, and showcasing how AI can help them in their daily lives.

To mark Safer Internet Day on 10^th February, a global awareness day which Samsung has supported since 2017, families from Frank Barnes School joined Samsung and Internet Matters for an immersive learning experience where they got to see tech and AI in action, whilst learning how to take a human-centred approach to using AI.

Jessie Soohyun Park, Head of Corporate Responsibility at Samsung UK, said: “It was great to welcome families from Frank Barnes School to Samsung KX. This year’s Safer Internet Day theme – smart tech, safe choices – feels particularly relevant as AI increasingly becomes a part of how children learn, create and explore the digital world. We’re committed to continuing our collaborative work to help parents, guardians and educators have informed, practical conversations with young people about navigating AI safely and responsibly.”

Dani Sive, Headteacher at Frank Barnes School, commented on the workshop day: “The children, staff and families had such a fantastic morning at Samsung KX engaging in an informative presentation on AI and online safety, and a tour where they learnt more about AI, Samsung’s smart technology and devices. Thank you to the Samsung KX and Internet Matters team for having us and for organising such an engaging, educational and fun workshop for the children and their families, which clearly had a positive impact on their understanding of AI including the benefits and risks of using it safely. We look forward to further collaboration in the future.”

Rachel Huggins, CEO at Internet Matters also stated: “It was a pleasure to support Samsung’s AI workshop with students from Frank Barnes School and their parents this Safer Internet Day. AI brings many opportunities and benefits, however as children and young people increase their use of AI for schoolwork, advice and companionship, supporting the safe use of AI tools is vital. Internet Matters, with the support of our partners like Samsung, offers parents and carers a wide range of resources, across AI and other topics, to support them to help keep their children safe online.”

Samsung has partnered with Internet Matters since 2019 to develop The Online Together Project, a series of interactive educational tools to encourage open conversations about online safety between families, and in schools. The Online Together Project offers age-specific information and advice on topics such as tackling online hate, gender stereotypes online, and AI fact checking.

Samsung is committed to equipping parents, guardians and carers with the confidence and knowledge of device safety and online safety, to help ensure that families can enjoy technology safely. Find out more here.

A new module of the successful joint initiative ‘The Online Together Project’ has been designed to educate on issues around online hate, giving families practical advice. The interactive tool encourages conversations between parents and children, made up of 10 questions. Offering age specific sections and the option to play with someone else or on your own, each question gives users key information on the topic and advice for parents and carers, and provides different conversation prompts. At the end of the questions, there are downloadable guides with further information and advice to help tackle online hate, plus a completion certificate.

Research conducted in November 2022, of 1,600 UK parents and 1,000 children aged 9-16, revealed how 12% of parents reported their children experienced hate speech online – the highest level of the last two years. However, it is clear that parents are under-reporting their children’s exposure to online hate. Nearly one in five (19%) children aged 9-16 say they’ve come across hate speech online. This compares to only 12% of parents saying this had happened to their child.

Coming across hate speech is listed as one of the top five things children say they experience online, compared to parents who believe it is the 7th most common thing. More than six in 10 (62%) parents were concerned about their child being exposed to hate speech – a jump of 11% compared with pre-pandemic concerns (56% in Jan 2020).

Online hate is the second topic covered by The Online Together Project, which launched last year with a module on breaking down gender stereotypes – with eight out of 10 (81%) parents praising its ability to help children develop skills to create a more positive and inclusive culture online.

Carolyn Bunting, CEO of Internet Matters, said: “Hate speech online is a growing issue for children and young people, especially with the presence of a number of high profile influencers on social media sharing extreme and hateful views. Worryingly, there is clearly a discrepancy between how much hate speech children are experiencing, versus how much their parents think or know they are experiencing.

“That’s why The Online Together Project with Samsung is so important, and we hope can play a big role in encouraging discussions about online hate and give families the tools they need to deal with it, developing critical thinking skills and encouraging a positive and inclusive culture online.”

Brian Ford, Vice President of Customer Experience at Samsung Electronics UK added: “Samsung is committed to supporting and educating young people. With people spending more time online, it’s crucial to provide tools that help young people safely navigate the internet and teach what is appropriate to share online”

Click here to learn more about The Online Together Project, and to try the tool now.

2023 is extra-special as it celebrates the 20^th anniversary of Safer Internet Day, of which Samsung has been a supporter since 2017.

This year, Samsung UK and Internet Matters championed the theme by inviting young people to join the panel of our webinar, alongside Ghislaine Bombusa from Internet Matters and Maristelle Pearce from Eikon, hearing about their experiences online, as well as empowering parents and carers to support the young people in their life through active conversations and practical tools.

Partnering with Internet Matters for a sixth year, Samsung continues to be motivated to keep young people safe online and ensure that families have the knowledge and tools they need to navigate the internet safely. Our interactive quiz based tool, The Online Together Project, has been designed to support all young people, their parents, and carers to encourage an inclusive culture online. The first phase focuses on tackling gender stereotypes and a new module focussing on online hate is coming soon.

Will Gardner, OBE, Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre said:

“Samsung have supported Safer Internet Day for many years. The Day provides a brilliant opportunity to highlight the importance of online safety for young people and provide practical support, guidance, conversation starters and more. This year is all about inspiring young people and all of us to have better conversations about life online by making sure we are all listening to what young people have to share.”

James Kitto, Vice President, Head of MX Division at Samsung said:

“At Samsung we are dedicated to ensuring that young people can explore the internet safely, and we take a family centric approach to promoting a safe and inclusive culture online.

We have partnered with Internet Matters for many years to improve the safety and experience of young people online. We are looking forward to launching our new topic for The Online Together Project soon; to continue to support young people, their parents, and carers to develop critical thinking skills and promote positivity online.

Samsung truly believes that bringing tech to the forefront of education can open up many opportunities for young people – which is shown through our wider work across Solve for Tomorrow and our continued support of Safer Internet Day.

We hope that our activities across Safer Internet Day, and ongoing partnership with Internet Matters inspire families to have positive conversations around online safety, as well as providing the tools and resources to put safe and productive measures in place.“

To find out more about Safer Internet Day visit: www.saferinternetday.org.uk to learn more about our partnership with Internet Matters, visit: https://www.internetmatters.org/about-us/our-partners/samsung-internet-matters-corporate-partner/samsung-micro-site/

This year, Safer Internet Day (SID) takes place on 8^th February and promotes the safe and positive use of digital technology for children and young people while seeking to inspire a national conversation around this year’s theme of “All fun and games? Exploring respect and relationships online.”

Samsung encourages a family centric approach to encouraging a safe, positive and inclusive culture online and through The Online Together Project has created an online interactive quiz tool for families to use together.  The quiz looks at the theme of challenging gender stereotypes which aligns with the Safer Internet Day 2022 themes of respect and relationships.

The interactive quiz encourages parents and carers to have conversations with young people around relevant topics alongside developing their critical thinking skills.  The tool has had a positive impact already with three quarters of family users saying that The Online Together Project helps their children be more aware of the support networks they can access.

Conor Pierce, Corporate Vice-President, Samsung UK and Ireland, said:

“At Samsung we understand that technology can bring challenges as well as positive benefits for families and young people.  As such we’re really proud to be a partner of Safer Internet Day. The day is an opportunity to bring world attention to the importance of keeping our children safe online.

“At Samsung our driving ambition is to make the internet as safe as possible for users, deliver the highest standard of safety features and, together with our Partner, Internet Matters, create family friendly tools such as the interactive tool; The Online Together Project.  We hope access to these tools will enable thousands more families to spark conversations and understanding about keeping safe online.”

 CEO of Internet Matters Carolyn Bunting MBE said:

“Internet Matters and Samsung UK have been proud partners for many years working together to improve the safety and experience of young people online.

The Online Together Project aims to help parents and carers support their children to recognise and challenge gender stereotypes online, to encourage respectful interaction and acceptance of others, no matter what their differences are.

We’re delighted to co-host the upcoming webinar with Samsung UK as an opportunity to bring greater access to the tools we have developed together, that are designed to support parents have an ongoing conversation with their children to keep them safe and happy online.

Will Gardner OBE, Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, commented:

“Safer Internet Day is an amazing opportunity for parents and carers, schools and educators, children and young people and others to start conversations around their safe use of technology. The need for these conversations is greater than ever before, and with organisations like Samsung supporting the Day, it will really help in getting key messages to those that need them, to help all of us to support children in their online lives.”

Internet Matters, which is built on collaboration through partnering with industry, has successfully delivered a number of impactful campaigns on issues including cyberbullying, sexting, privacy, online grooming and inappropriate content, offering parents, carers and teachers practical, step-by-step advice on how to engage with children on these issues and setting up parental controls.

Visit www.internetmatters.org/samsung for more information on how to keep your child safe online across Samsung devices. 

Visit www.internetmatters.org/the-online-together-project for The Online Together Project.

Samsung UK has worked in partnership with Internet Matters since 2019 to ensure that children are safeguarded online, and through this partnership seeks to support parents and guardians, and empower young people to promote a positive and inclusive culture online. The Samsung microsite on internetmatters.org provides a range of resources for parents on how children and young people (under 8’s and over 8’s) can stay safe online using connected devices. It also features The Online Together Project, an interactive tool tailored to different age groups – for under 11’s, 11-13 year olds, and 14+ year-olds.

This new interactive tool has been designed by Internet Matters and Samsung to help all young people, their parents, and carers, to develop critical thinking skills and encourage a positive and inclusive culture online. The content has also been reviewed and supported by teachers and experts from Global Diversity Practice.

The first phase of the tool focusing on tackling gender stereotypes was launched earlier this year. Gender stereotyping online can be harmful to young people’s mental health, and limit their opportunities. Therefore, The Online Together Project has been designed to help support young people, together with their parents and guardians, to defy these barriers online. Recognising and challenging gender stereotypes online encourages young people to create safe spaces to celebrate their differences, and to respect everyone! Click here to try the tool, or to learn more about its benefits.

The Online Together Project is also a featured resource on the Anti Bullying Alliance’s website for Anti-Bullying Week in 2021. Click here to learn more about everything that is happening during this year’s Anti-Bullying Week, and to see the many ways you can get involved.

Samsung has joined the industry collective which has a mission to improve children’s digital safety and parental access to information.

The partnership will see a number of new joint initiatives from Samsung and Internet Matters. These initiatives will give parents the knowledge and confidence they need to set up and use Samsung products so that their children can access the internet smartly, safely and securely.

This includes a co-branded micro-site featuring a selection of age appropriate guides and advice for parents. These guides will help keep children safe online across a variety of Samsung products, and include details on the new Kids Home feature on its latest mobile devices, as well as parental controls and safety features on Smart domestic appliances.

Conor Pierce, Corporate Vice President, Samsung UK & Ireland, said: “Samsung is extremely proud to be partnering with Internet Matters. We believe in the positive power of technology, which can open up many exciting possibilities for people. But it’s now more important than ever that technology is used responsibly and respectfully by everyone, especially children and young people.

With our mission to connect all Samsung products to the internet by 2020, we recognise our parental controls services should go beyond Galaxy devices and as we enter this era of connected living, we look forward to being able to help and educate millions of parents through the brilliant advice Internet Matters has to offer.”

Carolyn Bunting, CEO of Internet Matters, said: “The response to our campaigns has proved there’s a real demand from parents who want to know more about how to keep their children safe online.

“Partnering with Samsung is another big step towards building an industry collective with a common purpose, working together to improve children’s internet safety and empowering all parents and carers to help their children benefit from digital technology smartly and safely.”

Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Jeremy Wright said: “This partnership is a positive example of tech companies coming up with practical solutions to help protect the most vulnerable people from online harms.

“We all have a responsibility to give children and parents more support to navigate the challenges of the online world. That’s why the government will soon publish proposals for a new regulatory framework that will ensure the UK is the safest place in the world to be online.”

Internet Matters, which is built on collaboration through partnering with industry giants, has successfully delivered a number of impactful campaigns on issues including cyberbullying, sexting, privacy, online grooming and inappropriate content, offering parents, carers and teachers practical, step-by-step advice on how to engage with children on these issues and setting up parental controls.

Visit www.internetmatters.org/samsung for more information on how to keep your child safe online across Samsung devices.