Educating young minds about the horrors of internet - CyberSmartie

Internet has drastically changed the way children interact with the outside world. Not only does the medium provide you access to in-depth knowledge, tools to express your creativity, emotions and feelings – it is also one of the most impressionable tools of this age. So on one hand it is a lot of glitz for the youth and kids and on the other side, it also has a part that makes them vulnerable to the darker side of internet. Getting exposed to inappropriate material in the cyber space and online predators have had many disastrous effects on young kids.

“It was a mind changing incident when I saw my own cousin participating in cyber bullying one of his classmates. And when a little girl took her life as she could not express her grief to her parents about her looks and fell to online traps,” says Sayantan Sen co-founder of CyberSmartie. This made him, Shekhar Tripathi and Neha Doshi design India’s first cyber safety workshops for kids and thus Cybersmartie was conceived in June 2012.“On an average 93% of children have online access and visit internet at least once a week. It becomes a duty to educate children about cyber bullying, online predators, plagiarism, trolling, sexting, digital responsibility etc. so that they are digitally safe. At the same time parents also need to know about digital playgrounds where children spend a lot of time, share, collect and respond to ideas and opinions, what is influencing them and why,” says Shekhar.

Through the workshop they conduct, the startup educates children about online dangers, the precautions they should take, safety tips, how to have a healthy digital footprint etc. They also encourage parents to participate with children in the workshop. This is done in the form of pledge taking and entering into family pacts to ensure that parents are aware of their children’s online activities. Parents also are taught to handle online disaster situations. A lot of reading material is distributed as hands on guide to online safety. The startup is also working with the teachers and school boards to integrate a cyber safety module within the school policy, says Sayantan.

So in reality, do these workshops really help kids? Neha demonstrates the point: “after a workshop children realize that in case someone is being rude to them online, there are some golden rules they should follow: dont reply or retaliate / save the screen for evidence/ talk to an adult.” The workshop also encourages children to talk about their digital experience in public and help understand what is good or bad. The workshop encourages learning by experience of others concept and encourages active participation.

Each student is charged Rs 140 per workshop. And Sayantan says, efforts are underway to further reduce the fee and to Rs 20 per student for four workshops in a year, because he strongly believes everyone should have access to the safety measures. As of now, CyberSmartie has trained 5900-plus students in four months through the workshops. They are currently conducting the workshops in schools in Mumbai & Pune.

These workshops are publicized directly to the school principals and educational institutes. “Shekhar visited all possible schools in Mumbai to talk about Cybersmartie and tell the principal the importance to educate kids over digital safety,” says Sayantan. He further says word of mouth has been the best form of publicity they have received, as they operate on tight budgets. The startup is also keenly in search of VC funding to grow this project bigger and to be able to conduct it on a national scale.

The workshops are conducted primarily by Shekhar and Neha and they rope in independent consultants who love the concept of helping children, understand the dangers of the online space and are willing to support them in their endeavour. Going forward, the trio have plans to package the serious subject of cyber safety in the form of fun and games and conduct them as interactive classroom sessions. They have plans to build a proper program which will be educational and which can also evaluate participants at the end of the program. “It is time to secure all children having mobile phones and those who are exposed to digital world. And before the government makes it compulsory in all schools, we want to reach out to them,” says Sayantan.