Facebook announces initiatives to accelerate digital literacy efforts in India
Facebook has partnered with the Ministry of Women and Child Development to promote online safety.
At the second edition of the South Asia Safety Summit on Tuesday, Facebook announced a slew of initiatives to accelerate digital literacy efforts in India. These included a content partnership with the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), formation of an Ideal Internet Consortium to propose recommendations for online child safety, and the launch of We Think Digital in India; the company's global digital literacy programme.
The South Asia Safety Summit is Facebook’s annual event to host critical conversations on digital safety and security. The summit was joined by over 100 organisations from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and India.
Minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Zubin Irani and Ankhi Das, Director, Public Policy - India, South & Central Asia at Facebook South Asia Safety Summit 2019
Highlighting the partnership with Facebook, the Minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Zubin Irani said,
“While the internet opens doors for women and children to learn and gain knowledge, it also comes with the responsibility to ensure their safety, and to enable them to express their views without any apprehension. Our constant effort has been to progress the cause of equal opportunity for women and ensure a safe environment for children. Together with Facebook, we want to build ways, in which we equip and educate people to help them make smarter choices online and learn about internet safety.”
A look at the key announcements made at the event on Tuesday:
- Partnership with the Ministry of Women Child Development to pursue opportunities to build digital literacy to keep more women and children safe, by raising awareness about online privacy, safety, and security. To begin with:
- #CreateCareConnect comic series was launched at the event. Illustrated by a young Delhi-based doodler, @neha.doodles, the series aims to educate young users about online safety in a simple, fun, and engaging way.
- In 2020, Facebook will launch another Thumbstoppers campaign, which will be a series of short creative mobile videos under 10 seconds from India’s advertising community, that will focus on empowering and educating people on issues like gender equality, domestic violence, and education for the girl child.
- Facebook announced the formation of Ideal Internet Consortium: Led by the Aarambh India Initiative, Ideal Internet Consortium is a unique working group of child safety practitioners, that will use real field experience and research to deliberate over safety issues and propose recommendations for civil society, industry, and government. So far, the consortium has had seven focus group discussions with young people from cities across Odisha, Tripura, Jharkhand, and Kerala. The findings will help to create strategies focussed on keeping young users safe online.
- Launch of We Think Digital: Facebook announced the launch of We Think Digital, its global digital literacy programme and will partner with agencies from both government and civil society. The programme will make use of learning modules designed to equip people with skills, including the ability to think critically about what they see online, how to communicate respectfully, and engage in digital discourse.
Speaking at the event, Ankhi Das, Director of Public Policy for Facebook - India, South & Central Asia, remarked,
“Our digital literacy efforts are focussed on addressing specific problem areas in the social media world, which are essentially about how we connect to and interact with people and our online ethics and behaviour. We are building programmes, that are aimed at internet users’ digital hygiene and maintaining online privacy and security.”
These announcements build over the company’s ongoing efforts on safety and well-being, with partners including Common Service Centre Academy, Centre for Social Research, National Commission for Women, IAMAI, and Cyber Peace Foundation to provide digital literacy to women in India.
To double up efforts, Facebook has also been making some fundamental changes in product like Instagram’s global test of making like counts private, as well as, new safety features like ‘Restrict’, that protect your account from unwanted interactions.
(Edited by Suman Singh)
