Children and young people are eager to spend a lot of their time online, to meet their friends and to be able to communicate with everybody from everywhere. It is a common practice to watch videos on youtube.com or to upload pictures to illustrate one's profile by publishing much information on social community platforms.

Respectful behaviour on the Internet is indispensable. To discuss certain safety topics with young people, the German social community platform "SchuelerVZ.net", the German awareness node "klicksafe" and the information platform for children "Internauten" invited pupils to three workshops on the Safer Internet Day in Berlin. The young people contributed their ideas during the discussions within the workshops, how to inform and educate themselves for a deliberate online behaviour. Three main topics were: "Your Traces on the Internet", "Fair and respectful behaviour" and "Safe online contact with unknown people".

Children often forget or even do not know that the information, which is published online, can be accessed by millions of people, and their uploaded images or videos can be watched by everybody, who has access to their profile. During the first workshop, the young people discussed their online traces and the sensitivity of their private data. The second workshop dealt with fair and respectful online behaviour of children. Children and young people are often not aware that there are the same rules on the Internet as in real life. Nasty online behaviour can harm others in the same way as real behaviour can harm in real life.

Children must know that it is forbidden to insult or to stultify others and that good company with each other is a pre-condition for having fun while chatting. In the third workshop a fake identity was the subject of the discussions with the young people. Not everything is like it looks - it could happen that Paula, 12 years old, turns out to be Dieter, 35 years old. The children made suggestions how to behave when contacted by a stranger, for example, behave careful, not to consider the stranger a friend right away, or, if they feel uncomfortable, block the stranger or report the obtrusion to the moderator or administrator.

SchuelerVZ.net is committed to a code of conduct, which they provide for their users, to ensure a fair and kind online behaviour as well as to adjust the privacy settings. SchuelerVZ.net had to learn, that this code is not read by their users. Children obviously do not care about the code, they just do not want to read, and they rather want to access the community directly. Therefore the question during the workshops was how it can be ensured, that such a code will be read or at least the rules of the code will be understood and accepted. The children were asked to make suggestions, how to bring the rules to their minds. They were encouraged to record a short performance with their mobile phones comprising the content of the code, addressed to the target group of SchuelerVZ.net that means to their own peer group. The intention was to see whether any other channel might be of more use to transport the message of the code than a written version. The children reckoned as a good idea to highlight particular aspects of the rules by short video clips, but recognised that the complete code cannot be represented adequately in a short movie.