Case Study: EU Kids Online II: Enhancing Knowledge Regarding European Children's Use, Risk and Safety Online

The EU Kids Online II project was organised as a direct follow-up from a previous EU Kids Online I project (2006-09), which reviewed the available research in 21 European countries into how children and young people use new media, and the opportunities and risks that arise. The first project revealed a dearth of rigorous, comparative data regarding children's internet use, which could inform the development of internet safety policy at the crucial moment when internet access was rapidly spreading across Europe. It provided the context for the design and conduct of a 25-country comparative study of internet use among 9-16 year olds in Europe. The research was invited and, subsequently, widely used by the European Commission's Safer Internet Programme, a body designed to coordinate policy and safety initiatives across Europe.