On the morning of November 30, the Department of Information and Communications of Da Nang City coordinated with the City Youth Union and the City Police to organize a Training Conference on Skills for Safe and Healthy Use of Social Networks for union members and young people in the area. The event attracted nearly 300 union members and young people to participate.

According to the Department of Information and Communications of Da Nang, along with the increased use of social networking platforms, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of students using social networks and the Internet for studying has increased.

In fact, the emergence of more and more social networking platforms has had a major impact on all areas of human life, especially young people. In addition to many benefits, social networking also causes many consequences in terms of ideology, ethics, study, health... even being scammed or pushing them to the path of breaking the law. Therefore, equipping union members and young people with skills to use social networks safely and healthily is an extremely necessary issue today.

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Lieutenant Colonel Vo Trung Thanh, Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention, Da Nang City Police speaking at the conference. Photo by Dieu Thuy

At the conference, Lieutenant Colonel Vo Trung Thanh, Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention, Da Nang City Police shared that in Vietnam, there are 72.7 million people using social networks (accounting for 73.3% of the population). Notably, Vietnamese people are increasingly addicted to social networks.

“Many young people have the habit of checking their phones every 5-7 minutes to check Facebook to see if there is any “hot” information, if anyone has sent them a message? That is one of the signs of social media addiction,” said Mr. Thanh.

According to him, spending too much time on social networks will affect work, mental health, reduce interaction with surrounding relationships, and reduce communication skills. In addition, there is a risk of being bullied, mentally terrorized by words, blackmailed; and being infected with toxic culture. A part of users, especially young people today, upgrade their self-worth with virtual values ​​such as likes, views, posting virtual images, bragging, shocking statements and actions, and easily learn from criminals and cyber gangsters.

In addition, the use of social networks also leads to the risk of being scammed. Talking about the current "red" alert status of online fraud. Mr. Thanh said that according to statistics in early 2024, nearly 16 billion USD was scammed online by Vietnamese people out of a total of 53 billion USD globally. The huge loss figure mentioned above shows that Vietnam is a low-lying area in terms of information awareness and internet usage.

Talking about a real case he received, Mr. Thanh said that there was a young girl who was scammed online for a total of 1.15 billion VND.

"At around 9am that day, while on duty, we received a phone call from a girl explaining the incident. After listening, we confirmed that the girl had been scammed, the total amount was more than 1 billion VND," said Mr. Thanh.

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The Training Conference on Skills for Safe and Healthy Use of Social Networks attracted hundreds of union members and young people to participate. Photo by Dieu Thuy

According to Mr. Thanh, scammers are targeting new victims. They are the elderly, students, workers with incomes and even children. The reason for targeting these victims is because they all have smartphones but their ability to recognize signs and fraudulent behaviors is still quite low. Meanwhile, scammers have psychological tricks that make it difficult for victims to be alert enough to detect them. That is also the reason why despite so much propaganda, propaganda every day, every hour, there are still people being scammed.

At the conference, Lieutenant Colonel Vo Trung Thanh discussed with students skills on how to safely use social networks and prevent cybercrime, and also provided guidance on how to exploit and use official information on the Internet and social networks for healthy learning, research, and entertainment.

“Young people, when you have complete information, should spread it to your relatives. The whole society must raise awareness so that we can prevent and reduce online fraud,” said Mr. Thanh.