Telenor’s Chatbot Educates Kids About Internet Usage

Telenor Hungary launched “ChatStory” on September 19. Within 30 days of its launch, more than 7,300 people have conversed with the chatbot launched on Facebook’s instant messaging platform, Messenger. Talking to this computer program, which is designed to simulate a conversation, users are able to engage in a story, the storyline of which can entirely be customized by the users.

Taking the users on a dating journey, the youth can familiarize themselves with concepts such as digital footprints and the handling of personal data, just to mention a couple, while relationship psychology also plays an important part of the storyline. Telenor Hungary vows that, by playing around with this chatbot, children can have fun and be educated at the same time.  

Using the innovative online application, Telenor Hungary says it aims to communicate to the youth on a platform that they use every day and find familiar. However, despite the curiosity of the youth and the fact that they are technology-natives, conscious internet usage might lag behind the speed of the online world being exploration by them.  

“The main topics where we support children with our safe internet activities are personal data protection and online bullying. We have special education materials and tools in these topics for different age groups of children, and even for parents,” Telenor Hungary tells the Budapest Business Journal.

Long-term Potential

And such a knowledge base might well be utilized by a chatbot application as Telenor sees potential in the solution in the long-term.  

“One of the main advantages of Messenger or Viber chatbots is that people don’t have to install any additional application; they receive the solution within the app which is already installed and used on their smartphone,” Telenor tells the BBJ.  

Although automated solutions are sporadically spreading around the international online world, with artificial intelligence possible being a big hit, still important barriers seem to be slowing progress, such as missing elements — i.e. a proper natural language processor for the Hungarian language – to reach the expected quality of service.

Telenor Hungary has some promising data related to chatbots carrying advantages in the long term.  

“Based on the huge number of users and their completed ChatStory sessions – every second player played twice –, we can say that people like this way of communication/gaming/education,” Telenor Hungary says.  

Positive Experience

Furthermore, those who played and left feedback, appeared to have collected positive experiences.  

“There is an evaluation option at the end of the ChatStory, and two-thirds of the evaluations are four or five in a one-to-five scale (where five is the best),” Telenor Hungary adds.

Since the world wide web went live on August 6, 1991, online possibilities have come a long way. The current generation has been born – and future ones will be born – into a world of online presence, and seem to be left hanging as the older generation is still trying to figure out what is going on with online payments or trusting websites with storing our personal data.  

“As the importance of personal data protection is increasing, I believe that the time is coming when conscious internet usage will become part of the official curriculum in elementary schools. Nowadays internet service providers – like Telenor – do a lot to reach out to youngsters,” Telenor explains.  

“We support not only children, but have also created support material for parents. This educational material helps parents approach their children when they’d like to talk about the positive and potentially dangerous side of the internet,” the telco adds.

The latest internet buzzword is blockchain, and Telenor says it can imagine that such technology could be integrated into chatbot.  

“Integration of blockchain solutions depends on what the company wants to use a chatbot for. If there are payment or money transfer solutions integrated into a chatbot, then blockchain can be an important part of it,” Telenor Hungary adds.