For children and their families, the digital and physical world are connected. Parents and carers have a key role in guiding their children through the digital environment and making sense of both positive and negative experiences. Exposing children to harmful risks online should be reduced without compromising their opportunities to benefit from the positive impact of digital technologies. Families are diverse and need a wide range of support measures from different policy areas, such as social, family, health, education and digital policies.

COFACE and Vaestoliitto brought family organisations together in Helsinki in April for strategic discussions. The working group explored the intersections between family, education and digital policies; addressed key digital challenges for families of today, and to ways to build stronger partnerships between family organisations. We followed a spotlight on the Finnish reality studying recent trends in digital wellbeing of families and, existing resources. Maria Petkova shared the experience of Tulip Foundation in supporting families with young children and feedback from focus groups for parents on safety of children online. That was followed by discussion about key challenges including sharenting, the use of parental control tools, prevention of child sexual abuse online, families and artificial intelligence, smartphone bans in schools and how to prevent online bullying. The meeting also included a spotlight on EU developments namely he implementation of the Digital Services Act; the implementation of the Artificial Intelligence Act, and the negotiations around the Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on prevention and tackling child sexual abuse online as well as the revision of the Child Sexual Abuse Directive. New initiatives of the European Commission such as the Digital Fairness Act, a European action plan against cyberbullying and a study on the Impacts of Social Media on Well-being and Mental Health (to be launched at the end of 2025) were also presented.