With rising curiosity in rising applied sciences, together with generative AI, Safer Web Day supplies a chance for individuals of all ages to have interaction and focus on on-line actions and security.
February 6, 2024, marks Safer Web Day – an annual occasion that brings individuals around the globe collectively to create a safer and higher on-line setting for all, particularly for youth. Microsoft has a longstanding dedication to baby on-line security and, as we’ve lately outlined, we see a necessity for persevering with analysis to assist us all preserve evolving our approaches. So, as a part of our ongoing participation in Safer Web Day, we’re releasing the most recent findings from our annual World 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 selected concentrate on how individuals of all ages understand the alternatives and dangers posed by this rising expertise. Our survey reveals:
Millennials and Technology Z are driving the uptake of generative AI, with greater familiarity and early adoption resulting in higher 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 apprehensive about at the very least one potential threat arising from generative AI, together with issues round its use for scams (71%) and deepfakes (69%). These worries steadily elevated with age – Technology 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, higher consciousness of security options and instruments is required
In comparison with our 2023 analysis, the outcomes present a 20-point leap within the variety of teenagers who talked to their mother and father about on-line threat. In actual fact, younger persons are extra prone to converse to their mother and father than their friends and mates.
Whereas extra teenagers are speaking to their mother and father, our analysis outcomes counsel a decline in using security options. For instance, using non-public accounts, the preferred security function 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 at the very least 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 help knowledgeable decisions about their on-line exercise is much more necessary with the appearance of generative AI. Importantly, our survey outcomes present that younger individuals belief their mother and father and go to them for help 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 printed a toolkit for college kids 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 supplies steerage on the way to leverage Microsoft’s security options and household security settings to help and improve digital parenting, plus steerage for households trying to navigate the world of generative AI collectively. We’ve additionally included hyperlinks to a number of informational sources already made for fogeys, such because the Household On-line Security Institute’s How To Be A Good Digital Father or mother Toolkit.
- “Good Recreation” from Minecraft Training. “Good Recreation” is the latest addition in within the CyberSafe assortment of immersive Minecraft worlds designed to assist younger individuals keep protected, glad and thriving on-line. This journey teaches gamers the tasks, instruments, responses, and methods 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 obtainable for educators, the Classroom Toolkit blends narrative tales with tutorial info to create an immersive and efficient studying expertise for college kids aged 13-15 years. The toolkit is designed to assist provoke conversations about accountable AI practices within the classroom, such because the essential subjects of content material fabrications, privateness concerns, 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 help and work intently with companions throughout trade, authorities, and civil society to create a safer on-line world for all.
Further sources Microsoft supplies to strengthen on-line security:
Report Methodology
Microsoft has printed annual knowledge since 2016 that surveys how individuals of various ages use and think about on-line expertise. This newest consumer-based report relies on a survey of practically 17,000 people that was carried out this previous summer season in 17 nations* inspecting individuals’s attitudes and perceptions about on-line security instruments and interactions. Responses to on-line security differ relying on the nation. Full outcomes could be accessed right here.
