Safer Internet Day 7th of February 2012

Safer Internet Day 7^th of February 2012

Each year, around the world, Safer Internet Day is celebrated on the second day of the second week of the second month of the year - last year's edition fell on Tuesday 8 February 2011. The activities were a big success:

• Thousands of events registered in 73 countries
• 685 online registrations on our portal
• 1,200 articles on Google
• 2,5 million hits on Google News
• 87,000 visits on our saferinternet portal during the month of February

Each year the Insafe network chooses a different theme around which most of the activities proposed on Safer Internet Day will be focused, even though some countries may choose to "localise" their initiatives.

About virtual lives

The topic 'virtual lives' encompassed online gaming - from simple games to MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) - and social networking, i.e. the two online activities most popular with Europe's youth. As such, it will draw attention to all of them, and its key messages encapsulated opportunities and protection against risks.

Some facts and figures

• Gamers spend on average 8 hours weekly playing online.
• Young people sleep 2 to 3 hours less per night than 10 years ago.
• In January 2010, 18 million accounts were registered on Second Life.
• Facebook reports more than 500 million active users.
• Users spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook each month.
• 13 million players of World of Warcraft (WoW), the world's largest MMORPG.
• MMORPGs generated $1.5 billion in subscription revenues worldwide in 2008, forecast to reach $2.5 billion by 2012.
• Up to 250,000 players are simultaneously online on WoW.
• Transactions and sales of virtual goods in virtual worlds were estimated at $18 billion in 2009.

Messages addressed the risks young people run when they deliberately go virtual, for example through playing a MMOG as an avatar, as well as risks elicited when they project their real self onto virtual platforms, such as uploading a video on YouTube.

The focus was on how the real self lives through the virtual experience. In an MMOG one is truly immersed in a fantasy world. Hiding behind an avatar, players can totally escape into the game. In a social network the line between virtual and real is not so clear. Using a pseudonym will not shield you from exposure to real life behaviors such as bullying, stealing, rejection, etc., and your actions in your virtual life can impact on your real life, meaning that your real self could be misrepresented everywhere and persistently.