Daily Times

TikTok and Zindagi Trust have initiated a series of workshops across their network of government schools in Pakistan in a bid to create awareness around digital safety amongst students, teachers, and parents.

This initiative will see up to 3,000 students, teachers and parents attend day-long workshops to learn about safe usage of the internet, with a focus on social media. There will also be separate workshops for teachers and parents that will seek to educate them on how they can ensure the safety of youngsters on the internet.

Thousands of young internet users from grades 7-9 will be able to learn about best practices of internet usage and how they can become responsible digital citizens and cultivate a safe online community across the nation.

The workshops will cover a range of topics including navigating online safety issues such as cyber bullying, catfishing, and false information. There will be detailed modules on the harmful behaviours prevalent on social media, ways to share appropriate information, identifying fake news and misinformation, and reporting mechanisms to report illicit and harmful content on social media.

Content for the workshops was designed based on the findings of the student surveys that were conducted prior to their commencement. The surveys helped identify the major challenges students were facing on the internet, including issues like bullying and online harassment.

The workshops also aim to educate teachers and parents on how to use safety features on platforms like TikTok to ensure their children remain safe on social media. For instance, they will be guided about TikTok’s Family Pairing features, which allow parents to link their TikTok account to their teens’ and set controls including Screentime Management, Restricted Mode, and Direct Messages.

Farah Tukan, Head of Government Relations and Public Policy – Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan (METAP) at TikTok, said: “These worksops that are a part of our ongoing partnership with Zindagi Trust, are another step in the right direction for ensuring our TikTok community in Pakistan remains digitally safe.

We are fully committed to ensuring the safety of Pakistan’s digital community, as we continue implementing policies and processes to proactively identify and prevent every attempt to share inappropriate content on our platform.”

Faiq Ahmed, Senior Marketing and Resource Development Manager at Zindagi Trust: “It brings us great joy to be a part of this wonderful digital safety campaign in partnership with TikTok to deliver informative workshops for students in our adopted government schools. It’s about time we make sure our young generation is aware of digital safety so they are better equipped to deal with safety and privacy challenges on the internet.”