With rising curiosity in rising applied sciences, together with generative AI, Safer Web Day offers a chance for individuals of all ages to interact and focus on on-line actions and security.
February 6, 2024, marks Safer Web Day – an annual occasion that brings individuals world wide collectively to create a safer and higher on-line surroundings for all, particularly for youth. Microsoft has a longstanding dedication to youngster on-line security and, as we’ve lately outlined, we see a necessity for persevering with analysis to assist us all hold evolving our approaches. So, as a part of our ongoing participation in Safer Web Day, we’re releasing the newest findings from our annual International On-line Security Survey, together with two new sources to assist mother and father have interaction with their youngsters: a Household Security Toolkit and a brand new instructional recreation from Minecraft.
Microsoft’s annual survey, in its eighth 12 months, seeks to higher perceive individuals’s on-line experiences to tell our strategy to digital security. We share our outcomes publicly in order that others can profit from the insights as we collectively try to create a safer digital ecosystem. With the launch of generative AI instruments, this 12 months’s survey included a specific give attention to how individuals of all ages understand the alternatives and dangers posed by this rising know-how. Our survey reveals:
Millennials and Era Z are driving the uptake of generative AI, with increased familiarity and early adoption resulting in larger pleasure
Younger adults are essentially the most lively customers and experimenters (56%). The usage of AI as a sensible software excited respondents essentially the most, together with for translation functions (43%), work (32%), and college (31%).
Nonetheless, 87% of respondents had been nervous about no less than one potential threat arising from generative AI, together with considerations round its use for scams (71%) and deepfakes (69%). These worries steadily elevated with age – Era Z was least involved whereas Boomers had been most involved.
Encouragingly, our survey discovered that 87% of youth are speaking to their mother and father about on-line dangers. Nonetheless, larger consciousness of security options and instruments is required
In comparison with our 2023 analysis, the outcomes present a 20-point soar within the variety of teenagers who talked to their mother and father about on-line threat. The truth is, younger individuals are extra prone to converse to their mother and father than their friends and pals.
Whereas extra teenagers are speaking to their mother and father, our analysis outcomes counsel a decline in using security options. For instance, using personal accounts, the preferred security characteristic in final 12 months’s analysis, fell from 64% in 2023 to 56% in 2024. Parental management use remained regular – 90% of fogeys reported utilizing no less than one parental management, with feminine caregivers essentially the most lively in partaking with their youngsters’s on-line actions.
Obtain the total infographic to study extra about our survey findings right here.
New on-line security sources for youth, mother and father, and educators
Enabling customers and their households to assist knowledgeable selections about their on-line exercise is much more essential with the arrival of generative AI. Importantly, our survey outcomes present that younger individuals belief their mother and father and go to them for assist and steerage round on-line threat. To assist younger individuals, educators, and households navigate the digital world, we’re releasing two new on-line security sources. We additionally lately revealed a toolkit for college students and educators to assist them of their use of generative AI in studying environments.
- Microsoft Household Security Toolkit. We understand mother and father and caregivers are busy, and that the tech panorama retains evolving. This new toolkit offers steerage on leverage Microsoft’s security options and household security settings to assist and improve digital parenting, plus steerage for households seeking to navigate the world of generative AI collectively. We’ve additionally included hyperlinks to a number of informational sources already made for folks, such because the Household On-line Security Institute’s How To Be A Good Digital Dad or mum Toolkit.
- “Good Recreation” from Minecraft Schooling. “Good Recreation” is the latest addition in within the CyberSafe assortment of immersive Minecraft worlds designed to assist younger individuals keep protected, joyful and thriving on-line. This journey teaches gamers the tasks, instruments, responses, and techniques that allow wholesome on-line interactions, collaboration, and rewarding digital experiences, whether or not these are a part of multiplayer gaming or different on-line actions. The CyberSafe collections are among the many most downloaded instructional content material on the Minecraft Market, having been downloaded greater than 25 million instances by gamers worldwide.
- The Classroom Toolkit: Unlocking generative AI safely and responsibly. Now out there for educators, the Classroom Toolkit blends narrative tales with educational info to create an immersive and efficient studying expertise for college students aged 13-15 years. The toolkit is designed to assist provoke conversations about accountable AI practices within the classroom, such because the crucial matters of content material fabrications, privateness issues, bias consciousness, and psychological wellbeing.
Microsoft stays dedicated to creating safer on-line environments for all
We acknowledge the position we play as a tech firm in defending people, significantly youth, from dangerous and unlawful on-line content material and conduct. Security by design is on the core of our merchandise, and we stay dedicated to persevering with to assist and work intently with companions throughout business, authorities, and civil society to create a safer on-line world for all.
Extra sources Microsoft offers to strengthen on-line security:
Report Methodology
Microsoft has revealed annual knowledge since 2016 that surveys how individuals of various ages use and consider on-line know-how. This newest consumer-based report relies on a survey of almost 17,000 people that was performed this previous summer season in 17 nations* analyzing individuals’s attitudes and perceptions about on-line security instruments and interactions. Responses to on-line security differ relying on the nation. Full outcomes may be accessed right here.
