Google pledges €10 million to support online safety for kids and teens

Google’s non-profit division announced on Tuesday it is pledging €10 million to help support safe online environments for kids and foster digital well-being for teens, while introducing new safety controls.

The funding announcement was made during an online family safety summit held by the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) on Tuesday in Dublin, where the GSEC is based.

The event – “Growing Up in the Digital Age” – invited experts, parents, educators, and policymakers to discuss how best to protect and empower young people in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

The monies will support programs throughout Europe that create safer online environments, foster digital wellbeing, while also “equipping caregivers and teachers with essential resources,” Google said.

“Google research shows that speaking to kids about online safety is one of the best things families can do to keep children safe online,” it said.

In addition to the funding, Google.org also announced a new research initiative, dubbed The Future Report, designed to engage teens by welcoming their input and unique viewpoints on the matter, as well as several new digital safety controls for Android devices.

The research project will record the first-hand experiences of nearly 8,000 teenagers, to “help shape the future of digital literacy education,” Google said.

“We believe young people’s perspectives are central to these efforts,” it said.

The project is a counterpart to last year’s 2024 EU Family Safety Survey, which provided an in-depth view of 8,000 parents of children ages 5-17, and how they successfully (or unsuccessfully) were able to manage their digital well-being.

About one in five of those parents said they had wished they had begun speaking to their children about online safety way earlier than they did, with almost half saying they struggled to find the right time to have those conversations.

New online safety controls for Android devices

The tech giant is launching a new “School Time” tool for Androids to help parents limit kids' access to their devices while in school.

The School Time app – available for download sometime this spring on Android phones, tablets, and watches – will allow parents to restrict a device's functionality during school hours while still allowing kids to receive or send calls and texts from pre-approved contacts.

Further safety features have also been added to Google’s Family Link tool, giving parents a simple one-stop dashboard for managing kids' screen time, privacy and content filtering, and trusted contacts.

Finally, Google's online safety arm said it is currently working on “effective and safe solutions” for online age assurance. The company said it is seeking partners in Europe who can develop a way to issue verifiable age credentials for kids, expected to be used by app developers as a way to limit access to kids who don't meet that app's age requirements.

This ‘assurance document’ would be able to be uploaded into a digital wallet for use when needed, for example with Android’s new Credential Manager API, which “can help minimize privacy risks” as it will ask a user for ”explicit permission” to share the digital “age signal” already stored in the user’s wallet.

A recent study found clear evidence that children under 13 often get around age restriction barriers by simply lying about their age, but without a mechanism in place to police app sign-ups, there’s not much online platforms can do to solve it.

Google also touted some of its more successful safety programs already in place, including The School with Class Foundation, an online safety training for more than 1.2 million teachers and students across 11 countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Started in 2019, nearly 90% of kids taking part in that training said it was beneficial and “improved their knowledge of kind and respectful online communication.”

Since 2018, Google.org said it has provided more than €20 million in support of online safety initiatives in Europe.