New digital platform to encourage critical thinking among kids in Turkey

ISTANBUL

It was her children’s intense wish to get hold of her phone that led the South Korean scientist Yuhyun Park to accept the inevitability of coping with the digital world.

“You are a powerful generation,” she said, addressing a crowd of children under 10 in Istanbul on Jan. 28. By power she meant the easy access to information. But power comes with fear, as half of the world’s children are under cyber risk, she added. While Turkey is under the world average in terms of children facing cyber-risk with 47 percent, this ratio still shows that it is not immune to the danger of cyber world. Just like the world average 10 percent of the children in Turkey are video game addicts for instance.

Operating from the motto of “be the master of technology not the slave of fear,” Park has designed a program to “minimize dangers and maximize the potential,” in the digital world. “Digital intelligence” is a program that enables individuals to face the challenges of and adapt to the demands of digital life. In other words it is a tool to teach how to live online.

Used in 104 countries this education program is launched in Turkey in cooperation with Turkcell which partnered with DQ Institute, founded by Park.

DQ World Project, which is a game-based education system, measures the children’s digital intelligence and includes the families and schools to the learning process. With the interactive content, the children will increase their digital intelligence skills gathered under eight topics like Screen Time Management, the ability to manage one’s screen time; Cyber-Risk Management, the ability to deal with threats such as cyberbullying; Cyber Security Management: Recognizing cyber threats such as hackings, fraud, and the ability to protect one’s data.

One of the eight topics is critical thinking.

“Even us the adults are falling into the mistake of believing everything we see on the internet,” Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioğlu said during the press conference. “Critical thinking is crucial,” he said, adding that the program will provide the ability to distinguish between true and false information, good and harmful content.

The content will be reached from its mobile app and website.