Not just border protection, but also mind protection for children in the digital age - july 2026

Dear Emine,

Thank you for organizing this round table discussion.

Dear Friends,

Twenty years ago, a new chapter, maybe the most consequential one in human history began. Facebook entered our lives, soon followed by YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. It all started as a new way to connect people across distance, but gradually transformed the way we communicate, think, learn, and experience the world. Since then world has never been the same.

When it started we were all driven by extraordinary hopes: opening borders, advancing globalization, fostering economic growth, reducing poverty, and expanding the frontiers of human rights. Yet, as the internet grew faster and smartphones placed an entire digital universe in the palms of our hands, we were drawn - almost imperceptibly - into a new reality: the virtual one.

Today, adolescents and young people are among its most active citizens. But beneath the promise of connection lies a deeper question: what is truly happening inside this new universe of virtual friendships?

UNICEF reminds us of a striking reality: in many cases, a child may be safer walking alone down a dark street than sitting at home connected to the internet.

The World Health Organization reports that roughly one in three adolescents has experienced cyberbullying.

UNICEF and INTERPOL have also warned that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is increasing at an alarming pace across many countries.

Research consistently shows that anger is the dominant emotion expressed on social media. It is followed by contempt, fear, and anxiety. Joy, gratitude, kindness, and love appear far less frequently and, even when they do, they often pass unnoticed by algorithms designed to reward outrage rather than understanding.

Is this not fundamentally at odds with the codes of living and coexistence that our great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents painstakingly passed down from one generation to the next?

We are warned by psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists, that those values are gradually being eroded, leaving behind growing anxiety and insecurity, declining self-esteem, the slow fading of empathy, weakened attention spans, and a disturbing rise in mental health disorders across society - especially among children and adolescents, who are by far the most vulnerable.

Is this not an extraordinarily high price to pay for everything humanity has built in the real world over the course of centuries?

I was born and raised in a country where walls kept the world outside to protect us from it.

Today, our children are growing up in a world without walls - a world where everything, good and bad alike, reaches them instantly, without filters and without warning. And we cannot protect them from it.

Life has taught me something both simple and profound: both extremes can harm a child. The wall that keeps everything out is dangerous. But so is the open gate that lets everything in.

That is why, as we continue our efforts to make the virtual universe safer, we must never forget that the strongest protection cannot be built on a screen.

It must be built in the real world.

In the family, where love, trust, and tradition are nurtured.

In school, where critical thinking is developed.

In the community, where respect, responsibility, and solidarity are cultivated.

Only the real world can teach a child to distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil, beauty from ugliness, and freedom from manipulation.

Technology can connect us, inform us, and empower us. But only human relationships can teach us how to live together.

The future of our children will ultimately depend not on how intelligent our machines become, but on how wisely we prepare the next generation to use them.

I strongly believe that while imposing rules, and regulations and putting limits for the protection of children in the digital space, the greatest protection we can offer our children is to give them a real world that is more attractive than the virtual one.

Dear friends,

As Europe debates ever larger defense budgets and nations prepare to spend hundreds of billions on tanks, missiles and drones, we should ask ourselves a simple question: what is the point of protecting our children from weapons aimed at their bodies if we leave them defenseless against the weapons aimed at their minds?

The battlefield of the 21st century is not only physical. It is also digital. It enters our homes through the smartphone in a child’s hand. It shapes attention, emotions, identity, relationships and, ultimately, democracy itself.

We must certainly invest in our collective security. But we should be equally determined to defend the next generation from the invisible arsenals of addiction, manipulation, exploitation and algorithmic violence. Otherwise, we may end up building stronger armies while raising weaker citizens.

The greatest paradox of our time would be to spend without limit preparing for wars that may never come, while investing too little to protect our children from the digital weaponry that is already at work every single day. History will not judge us only by the borders we defended, but by the childhoods we preserved.

Thank you!