Safer Internet Day 2015 the biggest yet!

13 Mar 2015 UK SIC

On Tuesday 10th February thousands of people across the UK joined in activities to celebrate Safer Internet Day 2015.

With the aim of exploring the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community, we called upon young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers, and wider community to support Safer Internet Day. As a result Safer Internet Day 2015 was the biggest yet!

850 organisations support SID

More organisations than ever before got involved in Safer Internet Day with over 850 organisations (up from 650 organisations in 2014) pledging their support.  

A better internet is Up2Us!

The real strength of Safer Internet Day 2015 was young people leading the way by declaring that creating a better internet is #Up2Us! 

  • The #Up2Us film, which was created by 150 schoolchildren from across the UK, has been viewed over 16,500 times and was premiered at youth events in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, attended by Ministers and young people involved in the filming.
  • The SID educational resources had 270,000 downloads (up from 197,000 in 2014, and 22 times more than in 2011).  A key feature of the resource pack was the #Up2Us pledge card that invited young people to write down one thing they will do before the end of Safer Internet Day to help make the internet a better place.  Hundreds of schools used these pledge cards to create and share their SID promises
  • Young people were also central in this year’s SIDTV with dance group Diversity, EastEnders cast members and CBBC download presenters Molly and Harvey starring in the two 20 minute programmes. Designed for schools to stream to pupils on Safer Internet Day, SIDTV has had an estimated 74,000 viewers.
  • 1,000 young people responded to the survey about digital friendship.  The study revealed that 30% of 11-16-year-olds experienced someone being mean to them online in the last year. But 3 in 4 believe young people have the power to create a kinder online community. 

#SID2015 goes viral

The Safer Internet Day social media campaign was the largest to date with celebrities, organisations and schools spreading the word.  As a result:

  • #SID2015 trended number 1 in the UK throughout the day
  • There were 19,500 tweets about SID, with 140 million impressions
  • Duo Bars and Melody helped close the day on a high as #SIDTV trended during their exclusive @UK_SIC twitter takeover. See the BAM twitter take over storify for the full Q&A. 
  • On Facebook, SID posts reached 270K and the #Up2Us film has been viewed over 12,000 times. 
  • On YouTube, the SID videos have had 28,000+ plays (up from 5,500 in 2014)

On Safer Internet Day we encouraged everyone to share a smile to help make the internet a better place. 

The campaign was a huge success with the ‘share a smile’ Thunderclap reaching 1.7 million

Olympic gymnast and UK Safer Internet Centre Ambassador Beth Tweddle helped kick start the campaign by sharing her smiley breakfast. 

To view some of our favourite Safer Internet Day smileys check out the share a smile storify.   

SID hits the headlines

The Safer Internet Day media campaign was three times bigger than 2014 – with coverage that achieved a circulation of 330 million and a PR value of £5.5 million.  There were 900+ news items including:

  • TV: BBC Breakfast, Sky News, Good Morning Britain, Channel 5 News
  • Radio: BBC Radio 1, 5Live, Woman’s Hour + regional
  • Newspaper: Guardian, Independent, Sunday Telegraph, Mirror