Digital Wellbeing Week starts today to raise awareness of the dangers of the internet and social media

An international conference on preventing and combating online sexual violence against children and young people and the excessive and problematic use of screens is the highlight of Digital Wellbeing Week, which kicks off today.
Organized within the scope of the Agarrados à Net project, which promotes the digital well-being of children, young people and adults, preventing and combating ‘bullying’ and ‘cyberbullying’, as well as sexual violence based on images and the negative impacts of social networks on body image, Digital Wellbeing Week (https://www.bemestardigital.pt/) aims to raise awareness of the topic, placing it on the national public agenda.
The 2nd edition runs until May 4th, worldwide. In Portugal, initiatives promoted by participating entities are planned, such as the dissemination of resources on how families, schools and communities can improve digital well-being, a website dedicated to the topic and an international conference, at the Cupertino de Miranda Foundation, in Harbor.
At the conference, which takes place on May 3rd and 4th, topics such as “Sexual grooming – sexting and online sexual extortion of children and young people” will be discussed, “Non-consensual sharing of intimate content: sexual violence based on images” , “Artificial Intelligence and Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Young People”, “How Google and YouTube combat sexual abuse of children online”, “The impacts of screens on the development of children and adolescents” and “Mobile phones at school “, between others.
Speaking to Lusa, the specialist in the use of technology by young people and founder of the MiudosSegurosNa.Net project, Tito de Morais, explained that this was the way found to “create an event that centralizes all this information, on an annual basis”, to mobilize the society.
Cristiane Miranda, creator of the Teen on Top project and also involved in the organization of Digital Wellbeing Week, considered that there is still a great “lack of awareness among parents” regarding the scale of the risks and how harmful excessive consumption can be. use of screens and technologies, exemplifying the type of content that children and young people today have easy access to on the internet, and highlighting that the impacts “are physical and mental”.
The expert also warned parents to be more aware of the dangers that young people face on the internet, highlighting that there are children under 10 years of age with free access to pornographic content.
“Parents are often unaware of the implications of children having a mobile phone in their room”, he stated, adding: “young people are having access to it at an increasingly earlier age, and in a very free way, for example, to pornography and not exactly just images”.
Online crimes are highlighted in the most recent “Annual Internal Security Report” (RASI), whose data were published in the latest edition of the Expresso newspaper.
According to the newspaper, the report reveals the existence of investigations into the use of online gaming platforms that serve to entice minors to produce pornographic content, “using encrypted platforms to exchange and store illegal content”, as well as “ self-production of sexual exposure files of minors, following ‘grooming’ activities [em que um pedófilo convence um jovem a despir-se ou a filmar um ato sexual] or coercion.”