New €10m funding to promote teen safety and wellbeing in Europe

Google research shows that speaking to kids about online safety is one of the best things families can do to keep children safe online. Providing controls, tools, and safety programs to protect young users from online harms is foundational to the work of the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Dublin, where we work every day to build a better, safer internet.

So it’s fitting today that GSEC Dublin is hosting the “Growing Up in the Digital Age” Summit to convene discussions with experts, parents, educators, and policymakers, and to announce new contributions to online family safety. As part of this event today, we’re announcing €10 million from Google.org to support programs in Europe that create safer online environments for kids and foster teens' digital wellbeing, while also equipping caregivers and teachers with essential resources.

We believe young people’s perspectives are central to these efforts. So in addition to announcing new funding and showcasing Google’s latest innovations for kids, teens, and families, we’re also introducing "The Future Report," a new research initiative with Livity in which 8,000 teens will share their experiences and help shape the future of digital literacy education.

Helping children, teachers and caregivers in Europe

Since 2018, Google.org has provided more than €20 million in support to European social impact organizations that empower children and young people to safely explore the online world, reaching an estimate of more than 5 million children, teachers, and caregivers.

For example, The School with Class Foundation, together with national partners, has successfully delivered online safety training to more than 1,200,000 teachers and students throughout Central and Eastern Europe over the last four years.

The program's impact is evident: 90% of students found it beneficial for their daily internet usage, and 87% felt it significantly improved their knowledge of kind and respectful online communication.

But the digital landscape continues to evolve, and so must our efforts to protect and empower young people online, which is why we are announcing today’s €10 million contribution.

Surveying families to reveal opportunities

Supporting parents in making the right choices for their families online is at the heart of the event. A survey commissioned by Google with 10,000 parents in Europe reveals just how common — and important — it is for parents to have conversations with their kids about online safety.

Among other findings is the prevalence of children and teenagers using educational content, like learning a new language on YouTube, and accessing educational apps to help them with their learning and studies at home. Additionally, parents are using controls such as Family Link to help their child have positive age-appropriate experiences online.

Additional parental control features

You don’t have to be a parent to be aware of the debate playing out about the proper role of smartphones in schools, nor to share concerns about barriers to distraction-free learning. (Though many of us are, and do.)

So we built School Time into Android phones, tablets, and watches, and are rolling it out this spring. We’ll be showcasing how this new tool helps parents limit phone functionality and restrict app access during school hours, while still allowing calls/texts from contacts that parents have approved.

Our newest updates to Family Link make it easier for parents to manage screen time controls and privacy and content filtering controls in one simple place across their child’s Android and Chrome devices. Parents can also add contacts directly to their child’s device and choose to limit phone calls and text conversations to only these trusted contacts, so that children only interact with people they know.

Working together to deliver age assurance

In the same way, we have also been working to contribute effective, safe solutions for age assurance — a challenge that platforms, developers, app stores, governments, and parents all need to work together to tackle.

Our approach includes providing infrastructure that helps connect developers with privacy preserving age signals. For example, Android’s new Credential Manager API can help minimize privacy risks related to the credentialing of users to access developer content. This API asks users for explicit permission to share an age signal stored within the user’s on-device digital wallet. This could be from a digital government ID, but could also include other industry standard age signals over time. To increase the availability of age signals in digital wallets, we are looking for partners in the region who can issue verifiable age credentials. Any solutions for age assurance must prioritize privacy and give users control of their personal information.

Together, with parents, teachers, child wellbeing organizations, and policymakers, we will continue to work together to shape technologies that help protect, respect and empower kids and teens across all of Google’s platforms.