Happy Onlife

Happy Onlife. Together in the digital world! Play and learn online safety!

Happy Onlife is a game for children and adults, aimed at raising awareness of the risks and opportunities of internet and promoting the best online practices.

The game supports parents and teachers in their active mediation in the use of digital technologies with children aged between 8 and 12.

It is inspired by the traditional “Snakes and Ladder game”, combined with quiz questions on the subject. Quiz questions are designed to prompt discussion and allow the moderator to drive the players towards a responsible and balanced way of using digital media.

Happy Onlife presents key messages about children use, overuse, and misuse risks of digital media such as cyber-bullying, as well as simple and clear activities and strategies of prevention, mediation or remediation.

The strategies and the information included in the game and the booklet are valid at publication time, but they could eventually become obsolete.

Beside the present application, the game is available as board game in English and Italian directly downloadable and printable from https://web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/happyonlife/playlearn_en.html.

Additional language versions will be available at a later stage.

Happy Onlife was carried out in support of the European Agenda for the Rights of the Children and the Strategy for a Better Internet for Kids, which are part of the work programme of DG CNET (European Commission).

JRC researchers have produced materials to raise awareness and trust, and to empower children, families and schools in the attempt to promote a balanced and healthy life online and help prevent cyber-bullying amongst teens.

Happy Onlife is available as a paper-based game, as a web version (https://web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/happyonlife/) and as an app downloadable for free from official stores. The digital game is available in single or two-player mode. Players can be individuals or teams made up of several players.

For our research with schools, we tested it in different classes using the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) and divided the class into two teams. Children loved it!

Resources contained in this version is the result of the “Do-ItTogether with Happy Onlife” project in collaboration with:

• Savino Accetta and Andrea Donati (Banda degli Onesti, Italy);

• Patricia Dias, Rita Brito, Susana Paiva and Manuela Botelho (Mediasmart APAN, Portugal);

• Nicoleta Fotiade and Anca Velu, (Mediawise, Romania);

• Manuela Berlingeri and Elisa Arcangeli (University of Urbino, Italy).

We also thank students, teachers and parents who have put trust in this project from its conception, development and validation phases carried out following a citizen’s engagement and participatory research approach.

Our sincere thanks goes to William Peruggini and Massimiliano Gusmini for software and graphic development.

The Portuguese translation and adaptation of the digital game (first version) is by Patricia Dias and Rita Brito (Research Centre for Communication and Culture, Catholic University of Portugal), September 2016. As of 2017, APAN (Portuguese Advertisers Association) is also part of the Portuguese team. APAN is an association whose purpose is to defend, safeguard and promote the interests of its members related to commercial communication.

The Romanian translation and adaptation of the digital game (first version) is by Anca Velicu (Institute of Sociology at the Romanian Academy, Bucurest) and Monica Mitarca (Faculty of Political Science at ‘Dimitrie Cantemir’ Christian University, Bucharest), August 2017.

The Greek translation and adaptation of the digital game (first version) is by Anastasia Economou (Pedagogical Institute of Cyprus), Aphrodite Stephanou (Pedagogical Institute of Cyprus) and Ioannis Lefkos (5th Primary School of Kalamaria - Thessaloniki and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), October 2017.

The translation and adaptation of the digital game in Georgian (first version) is by National Communications Commission (GNCC) and Bidzina Makashvili, April 2019.