How interactive SmartBus initiative helps teach young people to safely use internet and social media

Many young people around the world, including millennials, born in the early 1980s and late ’90s, and Generation Z, from the late ’90s to early 2010s, have grown up surrounded by digital technologies and so are familiar and comfortable with using computers and the internet.

These “digital natives”, as they are widely known, have also experienced the rapid surge in the popularisation of social media and the adoption of smartphones since the start of the new millennium. Today, almost every task, whether it involves working, socialising, searching for information, looking for a job, shopping, paying bills – even simply talking to someone – can be done from anywhere in the world with a smart device.

Yet being a digital native does not mean they will be digital savvy – and this easy access to technology that offers seemingly limitless online connectivity poses numerous serious threats to unsuspecting users, including privacy breaches, cyberbullying, scams, malware attacks, phishing and identity theft.

Internet users who are still in their teens are particularly at risk. They will not even remember a time when Wi-fi connections were slow and often unstable. Their personal identities and social lives are inextricably linked with social media, making them much more vulnerable to cyberbullying. Young people may also lack an awareness of the importance of keeping their data and private information secure – and how to safeguard them.

However, governments around the world are aware of this growing problem, with the European Union (EU) at the forefront of efforts to address this urgent issue. Last year, the political and economic bloc of 27 member states passed the Digital Services Act. This legislation lays down rules for online platforms and search engines, particularly those with more than 45 million active users, to ensure that their content is responsible and that the terms and conditions and algorithms are fair and transparent.

These efforts are particularly important for a region such as the EU, where 96 per cent of young people aged from 16 to 29 reported in 2022 that they used the internet every day, while 84 per cent said they used it for social media. The annual Safer Internet Day initiative, established in 2004 by the European Commission, the EU’s politically independent executive arm, reminds the public of the significance of the problem.

Huawei Technologies, a leading global provider of information and communications technology infrastructure and smart devices, which has long understood this global issue, works to tackle it alongside stakeholders such as non-profit organisations and governmental institutions.