The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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MODERATOR: Is it also potentially increasing stress, anxiety all of these needs to produce and engage online. We are wondering about the opportunities. Are the opportunities available to everyone or not? What are the barriers young people are encountering and who is encountering those challenges? Is it mostly girls and women or is it young people from the Global South and what types of barriers are they facing? Is it connectivity issues? Is it device and equipment issues or is it different types of challenges? It could be more human challenges that they have lack of mentorship or lack of skills. We will talk about that in a second.
I want to share with you three cases, just so it doesn't seem so abstract to what we are actually talking about the first case is this young woman, she is 15, Lorraine Ray. She is on a platform called musically, and is mostly doing lip syncing of different songs, but she is heavily engaged on the platform. I haven't spoken to her personally, but if you look at her account, you see in some cases she does collaboration with others, so it's not just she by herself, but you see over time particularly some of the videos have gained huge traction and have views of 2 million, 1 million, half a million. So it is quite, she is quite popular for what she is doing. The second example because it's two cases is it was two boys, one is 11 and one is 18 years old. Both of contributing videos on YouTube. They are passionate gamers, both are giving tutorials on YouTube about how to game and improve and go from one level to the next.
You see in both cases the 11‑year‑old in terms of clicks and likes, on one he has 5,000 views, but you see that at least he has an audience and not only is he talking before the gaming skills he possesses, sometimes he does videos of products and sometimes he plays with that experience. You see he has gained more skills and grew his network so he has 17,000 likes on this one video he shared.
It's a different type of engagement, but also we will talk in a second about the lines, the blur, sometimes something can start as a hobby and it becomes much more than that. And the last thing, just to give you an idea of other examples, is the 17‑year‑old girl, Tomas, she is from the U.K. She said she loves to write, has started to write very early and became passionate about sustainability, organic food, but in a sustainable fashion, so she blogs on her personal blog, but also you see she has quite a few agreements with different companies that sponsor some of her posts and she features that on her blog as well.
So this brings me back, again, to our three questions and I think my colleague, Leonid is going to talk a little bit more about some of the challenges or the concerns behind ‑‑ that segue into the interventions.
>> Good morning, my name is Leonid. I wanted to make a short note. After exploring these three cases that Sandra mentioned, that portrays how young people are engaging within the digital economy as producers, consumers. The first thing that come to my mind is to think of the profound digital divide and digital inequalities. Let's say emerging countries, and proud situated context are very important when we try to understand the dynamics. As part of the activities that we did with Sandra and the team, (Audio difficulties). Many young people go from difficult barriers from cultural and economic capital, and I think we have to start taking into account these basic needs or talents.
We are not only talking about access like the digital divide. (No audio).
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: So now we are a little bit more people, so I'll first have the people who contribute with interventions to the session, because we are enough people but not too many, we have enough time. If we go around and say who you are and who you represent, but ideally not much more than that, because otherwise we will fill the session just with that. If we could introduce the people that are here (No audio).
>> Good morning, my name is it Horan Azem. Chief staff at ATRA.
>> Good morning. Emily Taylor, I'm from the U.S. Department of Commerce, supporting both Afghan and Pakistani delegations to be here.
>> I'm from Mozambique, but now I'm working on youth and social media.
>> Good morning, Jessica Moore. I'm from the U.S. I work at a non‑profit called the Pan American Development Foundation that focuses in Latin America and we have an Internet freedom program right now.
>> Hello, everyone, (?)
>> Hello, my name is Somara Skeneshka, senior advisor online safety and digital ‑‑ representing the Luxembourg organisation.
>> I work for snapshots in Paris as chief of local operations.
>> Good morning, my name is Jan, I'm a student and I specialize in intellectual property.
>> I'm Retina. I'm from Iceland. I'm from the Safer Internet Awareness Centre in Iceland and also a member (?)
>> Allena Mason, I work for the Dutch Government.
>> Jen Filio, also working for the Dutch Government at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. I'm the strategic information policy advisor.
>> Hello, I'm from Indonesia. I'm here representing youth in Indonesia.
>> I'm working at (?)
>> I'm working as a research (?)
>> My name is Jan Janis. I'm from Brazil with the youth program.
>> I'm from Mexico. I'm studying in the National University of Mexico.
>> MODERATOR: Wow, such a group! I'm very excited about the conversation we are going to have in the meeting. With this, I give the floor to the first intervention that was mentioned before (?)
>> JASMINA BYRNE: Thank you all, very much, and I'm really excited to be with this group, particularly since I joined headquarters in New York and I'm exploring more about how digital technology can deliver opportunities for youth, for young people.
We are really trying to understand more, particularly issues that face youth in lower income countries. As we were talking here today, young people between 15 and 24 are the most connected online. Some 70% will be online in comparison to 48% of the total population.
One third of all Internet users are below the age of 18. There are still 29% of users not on line. So those come from the poorest countries, and particularly from Africa, about 60% of the youth in Africa is not connected whereas only 4% in Europe. So that shows the big disparity that exists in relation to access. It's not only about having access to the Internet. What our research was showing us is that young people and children have problems also with poor connectivity. When they have accesses services are not good. The cost of Internet is very high, and then there are restrictive practices by both parents and teachers who will prevent them from using the Internet in ways that they want to use and they participate in the way they want to participate.
Then the economic gaps, Leonid mentioned about prevailing economic gaps that identify disadvantages of children coming from these countries, but also socioeconomic backgrounds. Let's not forget that even in rich countries there are people that come from much poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and do not have the same opportunities. There is a quality in education gap that shows that in those places where first we have low connectivity, where we, children are most in need of being able to access the Internet when they do access it through schools and when they have education about ICT, then this quality of this education is very low. Children were telling us in the research we conducted for the state of the world of children that IT education in schools is mostly focused on traditional skills such as using software, saving certain files and typing, but some have learned about safety practices online. And a few of them learned about coding.
But very few children were telling us that they learned about creative skills and creative practices such as building websites, apps, and making videos. Another challenge that presents is linked to Internet freedom, and a lot of the times the children do not have opportunities to express themselves through social media because in, particularly if they are criticizing the Government, so on, because these participation practices are censored by their Governments. And finally, I just want to say something about the persistent gender gap. We all know still prevails, and it has, this gap can have profound impact on young women and girls and their participation in digital economy.
Currently about 12% men are more on line than women. Let me put it the other way. The global proportion of girls using the Internet is 12% lower than that of men. But girls and young women are less represented in economy in general so while labor participation nor young men is 53% of those between 15‑24, it's only about 37 for women. These disparities actually mask, these figures mask disparities in countries where actually we can see that a high proportion of girls and women have possibility to participate in labor economy in those countries where women's and children's rights are not to equal part to those of boys and men.
So in order to foster and support the girls' participation in digital economy, we need to be able to provide better access for girls but also to take into account a different social and cultural and gender norms that restrict this participation. So sometimes these training programs for girls, for example, should be bringing the education to them. If other girls have a restriction of movement in those cultures where they can't move freely as go boys.
We need to provide training to girls that let them learn business and ICT skills. There are programs in Uganda and Kenya that are helping girls develop entrepreneurship skills. We need to take into account the specific needs of young women. If we provide remote learning and remote digital economy opportunities, we can also support women who are staying at home and working from home, young mothers, for example, which is more difficult to do when they need to leave the home.
And finally, when we talk about skills for young people and particularly for girls, it is important to bring in the private sector. I'm glad that we have representatives of the private sector and companies here because it's equally important to match the development of skills of young people, not licensed with the labor opportunities and the job market and I'm talking about the formal and informal sector. So private sector has an important role to play to support the development of these skills, and we hope to stay engaged with all of you in this conversation to see how we can jointly do more to enable greater proportion of young people to benefit from digital economy. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Jasmina. I think we will do the five interventions one after the other. So with this, Andres, please, the floor is yours.
>> ANDRES LOMBANA‑BERMUDEZ: So I would like to talk now a little bit about these activities. And this is a framework that we borrowed from the digital inequality researchers, especially ones looking at benefits and tangible outcomes of using the Internet or participating on line are not distributed equally. So there are a lot of differential outcomes. These inequality researchers have been talking about the difference in looking for, for instance, recreational activities online or activities that are more leading to finding jobs or like debating public issues or seeking financial information.
However, we discussed looking at the activities that youth are doing online that it's not only this kind of financial‑capital oriented activities that they are doing, but they are earning all kinds of social capital and cultural capital. So even what adults sometimes categorize as recreational activities, using InstaGram, sharing pictures of your favorite food or developing games in an online world that are recreational, sometimes they lead to certain kinds of capital that are intangible.
This is important because some of the examples I was showing at the beginning such as video bloggers or fashion bloggers or even digital games commentators. As they develop big audiences, they are able to translate social capital. Let's say their network of followers and their cultural capital, for instance, their reputation as skillful players or as stylish fashion bloggers, they are able to translate these opportunities into economic outcomes.
For instance, they establish collaborations with brands. They can also do tutorials, doing videos of a particular project or taking pictures of a restaurant in collaboration with companies providing some remuneration. This is what we have been discovering, and there are a lot of challenges on this approach, but we think it's important to raise these issues. One of the challenges is like how can you measure capital that is intangible, like social capital or cultural capital, particularly for youth who is not becoming, who is not achieving the status of social influencers, because now we live in a world where a lot of youth social influencers get a little visibility, but there are very few, it's very difficult to become a YouTuber with a global audience or it's difficult to become an InstaGramer who can get paid for their pictures.
However, a lot of these are doing like a just made mention, but with millions of youth participating in these programs. When we think this in the global scanned scape, the difference between the Global South and north, we see a lot of this influential come from mostly (?) for youth positioned in these countries with low levels of let's say connectivity, low levels of socioeconomic status for them it's even more difficult to translate their social capital into earnings.
For me, as a researcher and a person who is positioned between the Global South and North is going to listen to differences between Colombia and United States looking at what youth is doing in this particular context and realizing how, for instance, youth from Colombia is trying very hard in particular, for instance, Colombian youths trying to break into the music market, or developing videos in YouTube. They rarely reach over 200 views.
So there are issues to consider in like who is well positioned, what kind of youth is positioned to actually benefit at this level, and at this economy of scale, in a world where like the visibility of the content they are producing is not equal. This brings me to my final remark and it's related to the paradoxical nature of the digital economy for youth and on the one hand they encounter a space where they can pursue their passion and develop this entrepreneurial activities, with the hope of breaking into a market, bringing innovations from the different sub cultures into kind of like a big audience, but, however, the platforms and data is not valuable for them to understand how they can reach the specific markers that they are trying to.
So I will complete with this kind of paradox of the contribution between being able to be free to pursue any passion, any interests in culture or in production, but still confronting not only access but positionality and visibility in global and regional networks. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you so much, Andreas, so with this, Salina, the floor will be yours and Alex is next.
>> Thanks, I'm very glad to be here. (No audio). Let me put it in just a little context, which is a recommendation that the commission made and the Council Developed and the commission proposed and it's now being renewed in 2018, which is a recommendation for competencies for citizens to live in the paradigm of lifelong learning in the digital society. This competence are citizenship, literacy, language, mathematics, and also, of course, including digital. And digital is seen to be key. We are lagging behind in general, not only young people, citizens in Europe are lagging behind. You have mentioned that a mismatch, a tremendous mismatch in between the market needs and what people can do in terms of digital.
And this is what I would like to, I have a slide here, this is actually the framework which is online. You can download it. I have just a few copies, but you can download it from our web. This is a consensus after many, many, many, it's very simple, but a consensus after many, many consultations in between our services and our stakeholders in the European Union. We came up with five competencies earlier which are key information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content and creation, which is very, very much important. Safety and problem solving. And in everyone, there are what we call competencies and invite we have the descriptions of those competencies.
You will see in the next slide something that is showing also the proficiency levels because you can be more or less proficient in terms of digital. Let me say something, a study by ICLS showed that over young people now, generations are said to be native, they are not necessarily competent, digital competence, because digital competence is much more than using a word or using, opening the Internet and all of that, but children can do very fast, even faster than me.
But indeed, digital competency is much more as we have seen before is also security, it's also promoting creativity, it's also doing the most with the skills in a safe, creative manner. And problem solving and trying to get information which is correct and which, discard the other one which is not correct, and solving problems such to information to society technology. There are four big levers, the foundation, the intermediary, the advanced and the champions, those that are specialized. And from here to there, we call that the paradigm or the metaphor of navigating of swimming in the digital ocean.
We have constructed that, and this is being very, very much adopted by many organisations, and we have recently published a guide in the next slide about the, just the title. You can also download it from our website. This is the guide to implement what I showed before, which is the conceptual framework. So there are happening many, many experiences in Europe, which are taking our framework and adopting and creating applications to, for instance, assess, evaluate, see how young people behave, helping people also to find a job, because we find that there is a tremendous, in young people, tremendous problem.
They are early leavers sometimes. They are not, have no sufficient skills. They have to be in a continuous adaptation in learning, and this is not possible very much possible if you have no structured manner to do with. So there are many applications across Europe. I would cite something called Compass which rates the upscaling platform for unemployed people.
This is one big, big platform that paid a visit the other day, and it's using our framework to create applications for people, for young people to learn, to adapt, in a structured manner following the taxonomy of the competencies I showed you before. And then for work, it's another application, a nice application, which is mapping digital skills of students, young workers for employment.
And like this, there are several others. So important projects, all of them are in the digital interaction guide. If you go there, this is an interactive clickable PDF where you can toggle by such nationality, young, unemployed, many, many others, and you will see the experiences that are happening, that are a big, big number, more than 50 that have counted in Europe out of the framework. So with this important, I would like to stress, is that digital competence are evolving in its framework. Now that Artificial Intelligence is coming to stay with us, we would need also to see how people behave in front of artificial technology, and this is also something that has to be learned and will become more skill and also will become a expense in general for citizens and especially for young people looking for a job. I will stop here.
>> MODERATOR: You heard at the beginning a quick intervention about who is contributing online, who is participating from Jasmina, and Andres mentioned what are capital that young people are gaining out of this. Jasmina spoke from run framework coming from a governmental entity that looks at skills and measures the importance of skills. With this I will give it to Monica who will also talk about skills, but more from a company side. I think we have one more slide there. (No audio).
>> I am indeed representing my colleague, Karuna who is based in California. Unfortunately her Visa didn't come through. She waited until the last minute. So actually my flight was about to depart, she called me and said can you fill in for me, and I said sure. But she is the expert on safety on Facebook, and I'm sure I can put you in contact with her if you would like to, you know, dip dive into some of the issues I will talk about. I clearly didn't dress well for this very hot rooms. I'm wearing wool socks so pardon my ‑‑ I'm not in menopause yet.
So to start I would like to make comments about topics that were raised in some of the, especially by Jasmina, you mentioned economic apps and quality in education gaps and also social and cultural gender norms that are different, and I, before I dive into the safety topic, which I was supposed to talk about, I would just like to, you know, mention that Facebook nowadays is a thriving platform for women. So many thousands of women are using Facebook to promote their business and to work from home.
I, of course, I was talking about this, so I ‑‑ I wasn't planning on talking about this, so I don't have the numbers. These are amazing stories we are seeing every day of how Facebook is enabling women to bring income to their homes and also stay at home, and, you know, depending on the culture and also care for their kids. And also regarding economic and quality in education, we are Developing a series of hubs around the world, and I will talk about the hub we recently opened in Brazil.
It's been going on a year and a half now, and we Developed the program to be aimed at young unemployed Brazilians who have no digital skills. So in a year and a half, we are close to reaching 10,000 people already trained. So these people come and they learn how to code and program. They have mentorships from professors, from, you know, startup companies. A lot of them leave the course employed, and a lot of them have the skills to, you know, start their own businesses.
So this is an amazing work, and I know the numbers for Brazil, but I know we are doing this in several countries around the world, and I will be happy to provide more info if anyone would like to know a little bit more. We also take our responsibility around safety very seriously. We understand that especially young people if they are not feeling safe at Facebook, they are just not going to be on Facebook.
So we are optimistic about the use of our platforms. As you portray the first slide, I saw different apps from our family of apps in there, and we know that young people are keen especially on using InstaGram, for instance. And we truly believe that we have a responsibility to provide March skills to the young people who are using our platforms. And I just very quickly would like to walk you through some of the tools that we have in place nowadays, and one of the tools is our safety portal. So our safety portal has been around for a long time, but as we learn more about how people use our platforms, we are able to develop these tools even further, and we have recently added within the safety portal a portal that's dedicated to youth. So it's basically, it provides information that empowers the youth, our youth audience to use our apps, but to use our apps with conscience.
So we give them tips on privacy, we make the language on privacy settings appealing to a young audience so they know where they can go to change their privacy settings. We are also working with tips and resources around principles. Are you sure you want to share everything, and things like that. So and then within the pro to youth, we have Developed digital literacy library, and that's where this slide stands for, and the digital literacy library was Developed in partnership with the centre, and I would like to point out and thank Sandra for being such a great partner.
A lot of the work that's there was Developed by Berkman Klein, and it's basically a library for digital literacy. So, and then among the many issues that it touches upon, there are several modules on, that are aimed at a young population on privacy and reputation, on identity, on positive behavior, on safety, on community engagement, and they are very easy to use lessons that can be downloaded and be used by parents and be used by teachers, by professors in the classroom.
And just before I was telling Sandra, before joining Facebook I was a full‑time professor of law, and as I was going through these materials, I was so happy to see how easy they are to use and how they can be used in different environments by different, you know, people and really, really reach a large audience. So I know I have just very little time, but I wanted to make sure that you know about some of the initiatives that we are taking. We are taking our responsibility towards safety and towards empowering the youth very seriously through a variety of programs, and I'm happy to dip dive into some of the issues that you might find more interesting. Thank you so much. And Sandra.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Monica. And to let you know, the lessons that are on the digital literacy library from Facebook are available in 45 languages. So no matter more or less where you come from, it should be there and Alexa, I think there is next slide. So the original platform is on the Berkman compliances digital literacy resource platform. You can download them there. We are working on uploading translations which is a lot of documents. I think the last intervention would be from Juliana and then we open or conversation.
>> JULIANA NOLASCO: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for being here so early. I told her I have a 3‑year‑old home, so it's never early for me. It's always really early in the morning. I have a huge challenge because I'm talking about youth in front of Brazilian youth so thank you so much, and I know the program really well, so it's an important job we are doing here. Also I have changed my whole presentation because I am the last one to speak, so I would love to touch on some of the issues that my colleagues brought today, so be patient with me, because I just changed the whole thing.
So I think that the first message I would like to leave here is that at Google we believe that Internet has enhanced youth capacity to learn new things, produce new content. I saw a bunch of apps that I don't know. So I think nowadays Internet has provided a lot of tools for youth to produce content to be creative and to be heard, and for that, at Google we believe in their capacity to change the world. So we have a bunch of programs like creators for change that tries to enhance their capacity to produce counter narratives against hate speech.
We have a program called the Safer Lab. It's a program we Developed together with the Safer Net, which is worldwide organisation that works with online safety, and we have been working with a thousand youngsters in Brazil, from 15 to 22 years old, and helping them to create their own projects to tackle hate speech, both online and offline. So we have these amazing stories like, there was this guy who is a poet from the north part of Brazil in a community called Kelumbo and they don't have Internet there. So he travels by boat to have Internet access.
And he has been going through this capacity building programs through this project called Safer Lab, and now he has created a collective of poetry to try to bring some good messages on how people can deal with bullying and stuff. So there are many stories around, there was this collective on the south part of Brazil that worked with transgender issues. So we are helping those teenagers and young people on how they can boost their capacity to be heard and to produce good content and to be creative in dealing with such challenging issues.
So the second message I would like to bring here is around economic growth that my colleagues brought here. We also think that the Internet and Google tools can contribute to economic growth. And we know that unfortunately not everyone has already the necessary skills to take advantage of those digital opportunities. And we are committed on changing that. So we have built different types of initiatives that we connect them with the same, I would say, initiative called grow with Google. And we have been training people in digital skills, digital marketing, helping them on how to become developers, entrepreneurs, and we have some courses to teach kids on computer science.
And those, and we have a specific training for women that's called Women Will. So this year in Brazil, we have already organized six huge, like really big trainings in seven different cities in Brazil, and Grow with Google has trained more than 7 million people here in Europe. I thought where am I now. So 7 million people here in Europe and more than 13 million people in Africa, and I would love to share numbers of Latin with you if you want.
And we have this Women Will initiative that is training women on how to empower their capacity to have their own businesses so they can have also. We believe that financial empowerment is part of women empowerment as well so they can have more freedom and more options. In Brazil this year we trained through Women Will 7,000 women in the whole country, and we have lots of amazing stories. Like if you have the chance to be a part of one of the trainings from Women Will in our countries, I cried in all of them because we have amazing stories of women that are learning how to find freedom from, I don't know, a difficult situation through economic opportunities. So it's really important.
Also I would like to bring another program, like we have been working in Brazil in the whole world, but I would like to bring my Brazilian perspective on media literacy programs because we believe media literacy is a huge part of what we will build for Internet of future. So we are working with the Minister of Education in Brazil to build, because now we have common core ‑‑ how do I call the national curriculum basis? Yes, it's, we have, similar to the common core, the K‑12 in the United States, and middle literacy is a principle of this national curriculum. So we have been working with different NGOs and journalists and schools to create content.
We have been facing the misinformation in Brazil for a long time, but the middle literacy debate is so new for us because for that we need to develop new partnerships and to develop content that can help professors to implement middle literacy strategies in their classrooms.
Finally, we launched this year the U.S., a new program called Internet awesome, and the Internet awesome also has lessons and it tries to bring some principles to kids so they can be awesome on the Internet. So they can be responsible, so they can practice digital citizenship and so they can be safe on the Internet. So it brings some principles around how to be smart and how to share with care, which is a really important concept, on how they cannot fall for fake, even if it's fake news or I don't know, people trying to, I don't know, do bad things for them. It's cool to be nice. So they need to, they need to not only share and be careful on what people might be feeling with what they share.
And it teaches how they can be brave so they should always ask for help because they are kids. So that's it. I will be happy to share with you on the round of questions.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. So this was it from the five interventions. You heard, again, at the beginning what kind of youth are participating and what are the struggles they are facing, what are the gains from this participation, and then the role of literacies and importance of developing skills and competencies, however, you call it. We already are using three different terms here.
We planned some questions for all of you, so we have ten questions, but I feel like you might not even need the questions, because you might have your own remarks you want to make. But the ten questions are the following, so where you are coming from? What are the opportunities young people are encountering? What kind of capital are they gaining from your perspective? What do you think are their motivations to engage online? Do you feel like we touched on this at the very beginning and Andres spoke about it, do you think they are cultivating an economic mindset?
What are some of the short‑term and long‑term gains? Why do you think people are engaging online in these opportunities as we spoke at the beginning? How can we measure all of these contributions online? How important is the role of collaboration and networks, mentorship, for instance? What do you think about the power relationship between platforms and their young users? How do you feel about that? How do you think the lines between work and leisure or work and play, are they blurring? If so, in your perspective how?
And what are also the power relationships between adults and young people and how is that affecting young people in their role as not just users but consumers and producers? So these are the ten big questions we thought we would throw into the room to hear your observations, but you might have other inputs to specific interventions, but to people who spoke before.
If you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Gustavo Pia. I'm here with Brazilian youth program. I worked with Safer Net. Me and my partner, Emily, we have taught about 500 children and about 400 teachers in our state about online safety and we are trying to do this good work. We have worked with ISOC on the project and addressing those questions. Specifically when I see children, the children I have taught, there is not a very strong dimension of economics for them.
They become content producers as a form of play for children specifically which as has been mentioned here, they often have technical competences without having the maturity to fully use the tools. And for this group of children 12 below, they are making YouTube videos, trying to create an online presence, but it's more of a play thing.
They don't think about monetization of their videos. It's more of a youth thing and it's a way to relate to peers in their schools and communities. And, again, as has been mentioned, there is often a technical competence without the corresponding maturity, which is something we have to work a lot when they go to schools and teachers. Teachers and parents don't fully comprehend this. They think that technical competence is associated with maturity. So they often let the children do as they please without fully comprehending the dangers or what can go wrong. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Just an add on question, you spoke about younger children. Do you think that changes over time, that mindset? You said they do it first as a form of play. At what point do you think that switches?
>> AUDIENCE: Well, specifically in Brazil as they age and become teenagers, they worry a lot more about academic pursuits and some of them, I think, will drop down from this online production sphere. But I think this generation we are having of children will evolve into a more mature perception of economy around us. The current teenagers I don't see too often this economic perception still, but I think the children we have today, this generation, will mature into a generation of content producers.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. Any other thought? Wow! Now, maybe one and then two.
>> AUDIENCE: I am from the University of Rosario. My intervention goes with Andres' intervention, and I would like to tell you two examples a YouTuber consumer experienced in Colombia that I think are useful to see how young people are participating in economy. The first one is a YouTube we call Pallatives. She is a fashion blogger, and like six months ago she did something really beautiful. And it's that she was born in the poor town of Colombia.
It is called Capitana and now she study at my university and she has lots of followers. And in every area of her business, what she does is to prove like beauty stuff, and then she gives her opinion. So when she decided to go back to her town with all of the makeup she had gathered for doing the advertisement, and she stayed like in a public school in the poor town and started to give this makeup to everyone, and she made a video and uploaded to YouTube. So she is an example of how university students such as her are expanding digital culture to like towns and so on, that didn't know about this contents before. I think she is a good example. And another successful project of YouTuber is that there is currently in Colombia a new wave of YouTubers. And they started some movement and they now write books. So you go to libraries in Colombia and you can find books written by YouTubers.
So I think that's pretty cool because they are making young people making people be interested in literature. The bad thing as Andreas pointed out there is not only a gap between Global South and north, but inside of Colombia, there is too a gap, and this successful project, well they go to private universities. So I think the aim is to expand these kinds of situations to poor Colombian students not only for Colombians that are already making this successful approaches to Internet.
Thank you so much.
>> AUDIENCE: I work at Telecom Regulatory Authority in Afghanistan. Obviously in Afghanistan things are a lot different than the countries you belong. Out of 37 million, only 4 million are connected to the Internet and only very few, maybe 10% of people who are connected, they have quality service. So still like because of like insecurity and landscapes we have like mountainous countries, so we don't even have like 2Gs everywhere, where everywhere else people are talking about 5G.
There are some success stories, but what I would like to have from you guys is to ‑‑ we are talking about opportunities, but we want, we want to provide the opportunities. In other countries, there are opportunities. How do they use it? But we have to provide the opportunities. So maybe if I will share my email address and everything and if anybody has good ideas or they can connect me and give their ideas on how to improve their lives.
In the regulatory authority I work in, we also have the TDA fund, which is, what do you call it? It's access fund to everybody. So we have the fund, but we are still waiting for innovative ideas where we can help others to get accessible, and so I think my idea would be like to gain ideas from everybody else. That's why I came here.
So I think if anybody has already, we already connected to Jasmina and I think I will also get your cards and contact you.
>> MODERATOR: I think for sure Jasmina has examples from UNICEF innovation, but Andres has experience looking at different case studies in Colombia where Internet connectivity in certain parts is not great and people also travel by boat and so forth to gain higher connectivity. I don't know if people behind me and then maybe one and two. So you first.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Steve from UNICEF. So thank you very much for the presentations and the talks. It's really interesting. And I like this idea of the paradox because often for young people it's very difficult. On the one hand you have this platform that you can reach the world on. On the other hand, there is so much social capital and structure around people that if you are poor and I'm from South Africa that many people have ideas, but they don't have capital, they don't have the networks.
I wanted to zoom out for a second and see if anyone is thinking about data, because the examples so far of creating economic value by getting followers or by selling something or by selling content, but, of course, data has value. And the whole model, economic model of the Internet today is built on data. So if we start thinking about the value that young people have just by the data that they give away, and, of course, by using platforms, you get your data, but you get your platform, and you get this potential.
But I think it would be interesting work beginning to monetize from a user perspective, think about how the data can be monetized and the inherent value that one has. And in a way also teach young people not just to be safe on line, not just how to be creative, but also to be conscious of the value that they have by being users. If anyone has thoughts, I would be interested.
>> MODERATOR: I don't know, Andres, but definitely at Berkman Klein looking into that, on both sides, on the platform side and how are they making money out of young people's data, but also looking at young people themselves and are they tracking some of the activities and what are they doing with their own data and is that even in their heads something they can conceptualize.
>> AUDIENCE: What does it mean to be spending all of this time to be online with this energy and work when it's not compensated, right? So this is just a free labor, for instance. Or aspirational labor that you are doing since very early ages, but they are not receiving any form of payment. So is this youth growing up predisposed to when they are adults also continuing to do free labor and crowd‑sourcing and all of these Internet activities without having access to it on data, but I think like it's crucial to also focus on literacy around data and starting to understand who owns the data, who has property or need, and how it's also being analyzed, created for marketing purposes, because at the end this growth, if you look at the economy now, it has grown a lot.
But it's in very particular spaces, right, in places where we have this or the companies ‑‑ it's not well distributed. It's in part because all of the data is stored in certain places not in points of Global South we lack all of these servers for storing data or processing it. We are constantly Developing tools specifically aimed at young people, and if you are a user on Facebook between 13 and 18, you are going to get more warnings about the screen time that you are getting and you are going to get messages directed at you. Are you aware of your privacy settings? And we are building language around that so that users know, and they can decide at the end of the day how much data they want to share with the platforms.
We feel it is extremely important to have that information more constantly sent to our young audience. Also, on well‑being because you touched upon that when you opened the floor. We are Developing tools, both on Facebook and InstaGram, so that people are aware of how much time they are actually spending on line. We know that our study shows that if people are just passively consuming content, that might not be so great, but if they are actively engaging and building community, then that's a good use of their time.
So on InstaGram, for example, nowadays, I can keep track of how much minutes or hours a day I'm using the app and I can set limits. So I set a 15 minute limit to my InstaGram use. And when I reach 15 minutes, then I get a warning, you know, this is how much time you have spent today and this is how much. So I have been asked a lot is this in the business interest, and I'm just so proud to work at a company where we can say to our users, look, you have been online for too long. Maybe you should, you know, maybe not be here anymore.
And because we are really valuing well‑being as opposed to just having people in platforms all of the time and that not being good. So thank you.
>> MODERATOR: I think there is one question behind me and then two and three. I want to make sure Christian, my colleague, also has enough time for his remarks. Please don't forget to introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is Barito from Indonesia. I don't have a question per se, but I would like to put out input and share something back home. So on the issue raised by the Facebook representative I would like to say that Indonesian youth see that's this is a branding issue. So if we spend more time in the social platform it's not that we think our time is better to spend in InstaGram or Facebook, but it's something we have to do because for some of the social influencers, this is something very beneficial for us.
That's one. And second, in Indonesia we have so many digital economic activities and it's not only positive one, but unfortunately negative ones. The digital economic opportunities that in Indonesia is from reviewing food, traveling and do endorsement, so on, but unfortunately there are some servers, if we do great work in the school and it's a very disappointment from society that you do not have a friend that can help you on digital service. And we have this surface for two dollars and some cents for this server. And we also have the social kind where people may want to be bullied by themself or giving some controversial statement so they can get many viewers, many likes to gain public attention so eventually they may change the direction of their content to something either economically beneficial for them, or only for their own satisfaction.
And I don't think also we have follower, so if you pay $10 or $20, you can have like a thousand followers, a thousand likes. This can be done either through technology perspective, or there are people profiled doing something controversial, they sell their own account to others and things happen. And for social influencers who do the endorsement, unfortunately safety practices have not been really implemented in Indonesia, so they do sometimes share their own account in their caption. They sometimes share personal information that should be protected in their own caption that can be easily extracted by anyone.
They sometimes make up issues in their own private room so it's exposed in Indonesia. Not to mention Indonesia is also known for distribution of illegal or not illegal, per se, but counterfeit products. So based on that that doesn't help the distribution and advertising of counterfeit product which is violation of the law. These issues currently have been in Indonesia and the Government is trying to put it in their perspective and see how the policies can help this, but not really get into the grassroots efforts. That would be my input, yes.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Maddy. I'm the advisor for documentation team at Center for Human Rights. The first note is about the women empowerment. I was interested in the note that you were saying that you have like training for the women who are starting their businesses through online. Simply in Bahrain many women started working online through InstaGram or Facebook. And you can see the difference between the proper stores who has like CRs, and they have proper people who are working online even in the advertisement like you know that this one is working individually, and this guy is, for example, has someone who is expert in using the Internet so even the design differs.
So I think we need to talk more about how can we make use of these programs so we can help these women to be better. The children, in Bahrain we have actually a rule that guides the people that are misusing the Internet. Most people like children are misusing the Internet, for example, in total, they are posting something because they are reacting with hate speech. So they don't know the law. They don't know the legal limits, again, because they are not competent. They are using the Internet only like without borders, without very much conscience. So they are sometimes being jailed, for example, for three months or even a year because they reacted with hate speech so I don't know if there is a limit or a total, for example, in InstaGram also for the children who are using these apps, what is the limits of them? How can we prevent them from being jailed, for example, from misusing these apps or these accounts.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. I don't know if your intervention is very brief. The gentleman behind you is waiting. I'm so sorry and we have to go over because the Swissness in me is observing people outside worried about time.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm trustee of a foundation called five rights which works with the young people online. I wanted to raise the concept of rage appropriate design which is something being introduced in the U.K. now. It's also part of the new Data Protection Act, basically highlighting that, of course, youth is not really uniform. The way in which young people use the Internet changes as they age in many different stages. You don't go from young to adult in one big step.
So that applies both to really the way in which platforms need to interact with the use or, but also the way in which education is being done, so what we did at the university with young people, a lot of the feedback we got from them, for instance, was complaints that they get the same Internet safety lecture every year even though they use the Internet completely different.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. Maybe as a suggestion that the people who gave quick presentations, if they can after this wait outside if people have specific questions for you, they can come and find you. My dearest colleague, Christian Fieseler, professor, business school in Norway, faculty associate at Berkman Klein, quickly summarize this and see where we are going from here.
>> CHRISTIAN FIESELER: Thank you, Sandra. Thank you for coming here, especially to our colleagues from the Americas because we know and appreciate that it's very early for you. I just want to take maybe now kind of one, two, maybe three minutes if the people outside allow us to summarize a little bit. And I think it was a very worthwhile discussion to take a little bit of stock where we are when we are talking in terms of youth and the digital economy.
I think we had somewhat in our discussion a little bit of a balance between aspects of safety, of safeguarding youth and children, but also looking at the opportunity angle or the opportunities that are inherent in the Internet and digital economy for young people that are actually growing into more independence and sufficient roles. We raised interesting points, starting, for instance, from the idea that sometimes we, especially as adults or older fellows, we may not always be in the best position to always understand what young people are doing and sometimes this might also lead to a kind of over emphasis on essentially curbing emerging sectors, not understanding what youth are doing and being overprotective.
It's an interesting perspective or interesting discussion in terms of what skills are we talking about? Are we talking about additional skills? Are we talking about safety practices or are we then talk talking about the creative skills and maybe also the idea of strategic skills building on top of creative skills, the idea of being creative, but also using that creativity in means and ways that might give some additional impact or that might skill you later in life.
We had an interesting discussion or interesting inputs about global perspectives or also in terms of how we need to understand skills. We talked about the matter of access and connection, but also the idea of socioeconomic backgrounds going to matters of socioeconomic entitled capital. I would maybe just propose two points in terms of ‑‑ I think we had two interesting discussion points for going forward. The one is the idea of policy matters that maybe going forward we need to understand better what kind of gains youth are getting from participation. Do we actually measure all of the participation that youth are bringing to the digital economy.
And which efforts are more visible than others. I am sometimes overemphasizing efforts that are more fleshy like media production, and do we also capture wide enough right now things which might create a longer term value like coding or knowledge creation. And finally, we also then raised maybe some forward looking question, I think it was already a little bit inherent here in this discussion here to what kind of economy are we scaling youth, are we scaling them to the economy we have now or do we need to connect that with matters of AI and an economy that some might argue might look very different than 10, 20, 30 years when maybe the additional intelligence in terms of office work might be conflicted by AI and what do we do then. And Sandra, you are going to have an interesting session for that tomorrow.
>> MODERATOR: There is one more slide and we are leaving quickly. Thank you for being patient. Thank you, everyone, for coming to this session. We have a few more connected sessions to this one so maybe take a picture and then let's start to make the room available for us. Thank you.