For years now, at IES Doctor Balmis, we have been concerned about the influence of social media on our students’ behavior and mental well-being. That is why we are getting involved in various European projects aimed at improving young people’s social lives and mental health.

We were facing new challenges. Disputes and altercations among students no longer occurred exclusively in the schoolyard; instead, the “victimized” students were coming to us with problems arising on social media.

Our traditional resources for supporting adolescents—building their resilience and addressing the aggressor with various strategies—were no longer effective. Insults, abuse, and rejection… were slipping beyond our traditional scope of action… cyberbullying emerged, along with a whole range of attacks on our students via social media: sexual harassment, sexting, and phishing.

New problems were emerging, and we needed new solutions—or at least the support of new tools.

For all these reasons, we decided to collaborate with the Erasmus+ SafER-Web Project. The goal is to empower young people with AI-based support tools that provide them with a safer social media environment—one that prevents social media risks rather than merely alerting them after harm has already occurred.

SafER-Web can provide us with the tools we need in schools to protect our students, and it could also help protect teenagers themselves when they use social media without adult supervision.

At IES Doctor Balmis in Alicante, we are very excited about this project and will contribute our experience working with young people and in other European projects to help achieve this important goal.