Traditionally, the Safe Runet Week takes place in Russia in the first half of February. Within this Week, on 13 February 2025, the Russian State Children’s Library held the All-Russian videoconference “Together for the Family Internet: The Role and Capabilities of Libraries”, where the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education was invited to take part.
The conference brought together experts in the field of information literacy and child safety from almost all regions of the Russian Federation; the total number of participants exceeded 2,000. The conference featured educational and research projects, activities of libraries and the partner organizations related to various aspects of the digital safety of children and youth – improving digital literacy, developing digital competencies, education in the field of artificial intelligence technologies and their use in various spheres of life.
An open lecture by Tatiana Murovana, UNESCO IITE Programme Specialist, titled “New Challenges in Media and Information Literacy: The Place and Role of Libraries” was held for the conference participants. During the lecture, Ms. Murovana presented “pain points” in the field of information, media and technology, indicating the most urgent tasks for media and information literacy education today, such as the increase of disinformation and unverifiable content, a decrease in the reliability of information sources and trust in them, the erosion of systems for fixation and protection of copyright and intellectual property, the replacement of human communication by interaction with AI assistants, the replacement of information deficit by attention deficit, and the reduction of the role of memory institutions. The components of critical thinking that are relevant in the era of artificial intelligence were thoroughly discussed during the lecture.
The conference has become a major platform for discussing existing problems and challenges in the field of childhood information security, as well as for sharing best practices in promoting positive content created by library specialists and their partners.