EU KIDS ONLINE 2019 in Finland: Focus on civic non-participation and media literacy

Kids all over the world, including Europe, are using diversified online platforms to meet their everyday goals in various purposes such as education, entertainment, consumption, interaction, creation and so on. Young people’s widespread engagement with modern technologies helps them to learn in the media and through the media that has resulted to turn them into digital citizen. However, in Finland, mediacentric youth generation is still not interested in participating civic matters online. Therefore, the aim of the study is to frame this civic non-participatory tendency in the manuscript of the article titled ‘Youth online in Finland: civic non-participation’. Moreover, the reflection paper is for moving forward the discussion of the manuscript’s certain issue by constructing a model of civic media education as a pedagogical solution of civic non-participation. This study is a part of EU KIDS ONLINE 2019, basically focused on Finland where 1350 Finnish youth respondents represented the age group of 9 to 17. EU KIDS ONLINE is a Europe based survey which has been conducted in 21 European countries. The aim of this survey is to ensure youth’s safety in web platform by evaluating their uses and experiences of online activities. Finally, this statistical research has created opportunity to work more on Finnish youth and their civic activity from qualitative perspective. In addition, it also may help the policy makers to implement new form of civic media education in Finnish pedagogy

Investigating Malaysian Youth’s Social Media Usage, Competencies and Practice with regard to Crime Prevention: An Application of the Social Media Literacy Model

According to the statistics, majority of social media users in Malaysia are youth aged 13-34. They use the medium on a frequent basis and at an extended period of time to serve different important functions including for communication, socialisation, building and maintaining relationship, overcoming loneliness, sharing of information, learning and entertainment. There is no doubt of the usefulness of social media, but, the medium also presents risks to youth. On the social media sphere, youth are exposed to risks such as scam, sexual harassment, pedophile, pornography and cyberbullying. Earlier studies also reported that the number of crime cases reported involving youth’s social media practices are on the rise in Malaysia. One way to reduce threat of committing high-risk behaviours and becoming victim on social media is by having adequate level of social media competencies. Such competencies also enable youth to effectively use social media to help the authority in preventing crime. But the question is; what is the level of Malaysian youth’s competencies of social media? Do they use social media to help the authority in preventing crime? In order to answer these questions, a survey involving 500 respondents was conducted to investigate Malaysian youth’s social media usage, competencies and practice with regard to crime prevention

Our future: a Lancet commission on adolescent health and wellbeing.

Unprecedented global forces are shaping the health and wellbeing of the largest generation of 10 to 24 year olds in human history. Population mobility, global communications, economic development, and the sustainability of ecosystems are setting the future course for this generation and, in turn, humankind. At the same time, we have come to new understandings of adolescence as a critical phase in life for achieving human potential. Adolescence is characterised by dynamic brain development in which the interaction with the social environment shapes the capabilities an individual takes forward into adult life.3 During adolescence, an individual acquires the physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and economic resources that are the foundation for later life health and wellbeing. These same resources define trajectories into the next generation. Investments in adolescent health and wellbeing bring benefits today, for decades to come, and for the next generation. Better childhood health and nutrition, extensions to education, delays in family formation, and new technologies offer the possibility of this being the healthiest generation of adolescents ever. But these are also the ages when new and different health problems related to the onset of sexual activity, emotional control, and behaviour typically emerge. Global trends include those promoting unhealthy lifestyles and commodities, the crisis of youth unemployment, less family stability, environmental degradation, armed conflict, and mass migration, all of which pose major threats to adolescent health and wellbeing. Adolescents and young adults have until recently been overlooked in global health and social policy, one reason why they have had fewer health gains with economic development than other age groups. The UN Secretary-General's Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health initiated, in September, 2015, presents an outstanding opportunity for investment in adolescent health and wellbeing. However, because of limits to resources and technical capacities at both the national and the global level, effective response has many challenges. The question of where to make the most effective investments is now pressing for the international development community. This Commission outlines the opportunities and challenges for investment at both country and global levels (panel 1)

Participation Barriers to Youth Civic Engagement in Social Media

Organizations aiming to foster civic engagement, such as government bodies, news outlets, political parties, and NGOs, struggle to purposefully use social media to engage young people. To respond to this challenge we conducted five group-interviews with 27 youth, 16–26 years, about their experiences of and barriers to civic engagement in social media. Our paper contributes to identifying specific participation barriers that young people experience concerning social media civic engagement, and how organizations should work to overcome these barriers