Garfield's Cyber Safety Adventures
Children are navigating the internet at increasingly younger ages. For parents, it’s difficult to both stay current with the rapidly changing online world, and find a way to interest young children in internet safety.
To help parents with these tasks, the Center for Cyber Safety and Education , a non-profit organization headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, has teamed up with Jim Davis, the creator of the comic Garfield – the beloved cat who enjoys eating lasagna and taking naps. Together, the Center and Davis have created a comprehensive program, complete with full-length comic books and other resources, to help children navigate the world of the internet, safely.
Through the Garfield comics, available for download at safeandsecureonline.org, educators and parents will be able to teach children to navigate internet safety issues. Garfield interacts with others to address common problems children encounter when they begin to utilize web-based resources independently of their parents.
The Center is a relatively new organization – started five years ago – dedicated to providing its members with training on internet security issues, according to Pat Craven, director of the Center. The organization wanted to expand its resources to address security issues related to children. “In order to expand our mission,” Craven explained, “we were searching for a timeless tool that would be useful for many years to come, one that would appeal to children all over the world.”
The Center identified the possibility of working with Jim Davis to create resources centered on the Garfield character and his friends. “Garfield is already known by kids, parents, grandparents, and educators across the globe – it is recognizable. The comics are attention getting and easy to translate into many languages. His character has been around for many years, and the content’s themes and characters are timeless,” Craven said.
“I greatly appreciate the work the Center for Cyber Safety and Education does,” said Davis. “When we took our analog cat into the digital age, we were keenly aware that kids would be coming to garfield.com and to our free educational site, professorgarfield.org. We wanted to be sure that Garfield was entertaining in a safe and secure environment. Parents have learned to trust Garfield and we wanted to do everything we could to honor that trust.”
The Center for Cyber Safety and Education plans to work with Davis to create 12 full-length digital comic books, which will be available free of charge on the Center’s website (one is already published and available). New comics will be released every three or four months. Supplemental materials, including activity books and leaders’ kits, will be available in a variety of formats to educators, parents, local non-profit groups, and any other organization that may want to instruct children on cyber safety issues. “As time passes and new issues arise in the field of cyber security, count on Garfield to be providing fresh content addressing the new challenges,” Davis said. “The threats change day-to-day— it’s hard to keep up. Our website will be a resource to make it easier to be informed about cyber safety.”
Future topics to be covered include: interactions with strangers online; posting personal data online, such as photos with addresses and locations; social media usage; online gaming; cyberbullying; identity theft; and computer protection.
The first comic centers on relationships with online friends. “Our first comic book includes important messages about the distinction between ‘friends’ and ‘online friends.’ Statistics say 40% of elementary age kids have chatted with a stranger online – that’s a concern we wanted to address,” said Davis.
Davis has introduced a new character for the comic books, Dr. Cybrina, a cyber safety instructor. A woman was intentionally selected for this character, an expert in the online security arena. “We wanted to encourage girls to pursue STEM careers (careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Positions focused on network and online security are available in increasing demand. We want to continue to encourage children to work toward careers in these fields,” Craven explained.
For more information and to download the first Garfield cyber safety comic book, visit safeandsecureonline.org.