Dr. Leo Pekkala:

In the school system and the national core curricula for comprehensive education, it starts in early childhood education and continues to second level education. Media literacy is seen as developing a set of competencies and skills and young children can learn what can be done with various devices and how stories can be created. You learn to understand that behind every story, there is always someone with some kind of idea. Later, at the teenage phase, you start to create stories and little movies. Basically, you have to develop the skill all the time, but when you learn to create, you also learn to understand that all the different stories and pictures you see have been created by someone. That, we think, helps foster the discussion. Moreover, teachers discuss issues and help students understand who is behind different issues and how they should check facts if they see something that is probably not true. Nevertheless, a lot of media use is for fun, so we do not want it to be too serious. Playing games, for example, is not always bad and can also be good fun and can develop certain skills.

The Deputy asked about the responsibilities of social media platforms, especially the very large ones, and there is a problem in that regard. Of course, for a small country such as Finland, we do not have any of the headquarters within our country and legal system, so we have to see what happens in this space in Irish or Dutch law. We have little power in that respect and that is why we have to invest in education. It is not only school education but also something that happens outside school, in hobbies and with grandparents. That is why we also target the adult population, given they are important and we cannot focus only on children and young people.