"We must try to protect ourselves as much as possible," the uniformed police woman, equipped with a gun on her belt, tells the pupils of a primary school in Rennes, France.
Chief Constable Karine has begun her special lesson on online safety for the class of ten- and eleven-year-olds.
"I'm not here to lecture you," she added, before asking the children what's all possible on the internet.
Little hands shoot up: search for information online, message friends, make video calls, buy, sell, and play video games.
All the while, the policewoman writes down the darker side on a whiteboard: scams, hacking, cyber-bullying, fake news and disinformation. "Sometimes you think you're trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. But already, with this little spoon, if I can get things moving, that's not bad," argues the 52-year-old police woman, who taught around 40 classes last year.
As well as basics like password safety, and not meeting strangers encountered online in person, the lesson covers social media use and how to recognize misleading or false information.
The aim is for the children to adopt a code of good conduct on the internet which will certainly be of interest to their parents.
The internet: reward but also risk
Now more than ever, France and other European countries in the wider European Union are trying to prepare their citizens to navigate the powerful impact of digital technology and the internet on economies and societies.
To bolster these efforts, the Council of Europe, an international human rights organisation, declared 2025 to be the European Year of Digital Citizenship Education.
This ties in with ongoing EU projects like the Digital Education Action Plan to reduce the health risks associated with digital technology like internet addiction and the dangers of social divisions exacerbated by online platforms.
The idea is for European governments to help the public benefit from the education and employment opportunities the internet brings through greater digital literacy with work underway in some EU member states already. In December 2024, for example, interim Bulgarian Education Minister Galin Tsokov announced a new project on digital well-being, funded by the EU's Erasmus+ programme worth over 783,000 Euro.
The Bulgarian Education Department said the project involves five other countries and integrates digital technologies and artificial intelligence into the education system and promotes digital literacy in schools, stressing the importance of safety, ethics and inclusion while also addressing cyberbullying.
Spain meanwhile is moving forward with a new law that guarantees the rights of minors online for the first time. This includes the right to privacy, confidentiality of communications, and protection of personal data and access to age-appropriate content.
The forthcoming law also includes a plan for digital literacy developed by relevant authorities so that from primary school age onwards, students receive classes to combat false information and make responsible use of the internet.
The Spanish legislation also features a protocol for doctors to detect addictions in children related to digital technology and regulations for warning labels on all digital products about the content of applications and if it is suitable or not for minors.
Digital education and literacy programmes, like all policies, are however at the mercy of political headwinds with even basic information and communication technology (ICT) programmes in Germany subject to dispute.
After months of wrangling over financial contributions, the German government and federal states agreed in December to continue the so-called Digital Pact 2.0. The pact is to invest 2.5 billion Euro over the next six years in equipping schools with laptops and modern IT infrastructure.
The talks between the two sides had become bogged down under former Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger, whose liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) left the three-party German coalition government in November.
In spite of the squabbling, Education Minister Cem Özdemir said the agreement would shape the future of German schoolchildren's digital abilities with training teachers a major feature.
Özdemir admitted the pact's future would depend on future governments and their budgets but expressed confidence that no German government would be able to override the agreement.
Germany will hold early elections on February 23.
Slovenia shows the scale of the wider challenge facing many EU countries in terms of digital literacy and upgrading their economies. While the European Commission in 2024 praised Ljubljana for the digital modernisation of government services like healthcare, the digitalisation of the economy is below the EU average on most indicators, and the lack of ICT professionals is a major concern.
Slovenia also lags behind the EU average in the development of digital competences among young people (63.4 percent, compared to the European average of 71.2 percent).
A national strategy launched in 2023 to address these digital deficits in Slovenia has been criticised as being under-resourced and with many adopted measures too slow to be translated into practice.
Artificial Intelligence and digital illiteracy: a genuine danger to democracy? .
A wider social risk, affecting everyone and not just children, is artificial intelligence (AI).
Is AI a threat to democracy though? Perhaps not alone but combined with "the average user's lack of digital literacy" it could be, said Izidor Mlakar, a scientist leading a Human-centric Explorations and Research in AI, Technology, Medicine and Enhanced Data team, in an interview with Italian news agency ANSA.
HUMADEX is a research group based in Slovenia and is part of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science University of Maribor.
"Generative AI models can be used to create highly convincing disinformation and manipulated media, which can then spread rapidly online," Mlakar said.
According to Mlakar, AI is also dangerous because "social media powered by it can accelerate the spread of misinformation", for example because "AI-powered bots and targeted messaging can be used to further influence public opinion and voter sentiment".
"Many people struggle to critically evaluate the accuracy and reliability of information online, especially when it comes from AI-generated sources," Mlakar said.
"Furthermore, the reactions and reactivity of the state and traditional, trusted media cannot compete with the quality and potential reach of negative content," he added.
(The content is based on news by agencies participating in the enr, in this case AFP, ANSA, BTA, dpa, EFE, STA)
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