At least 10 percent of evening news is about crime. Yet, the Estonian public continues to pay disproportionately little attention to topics such as cybercrime and cybersecurity. Why? After all, we are all more or less part of the digital world every day. Where is our common sense, the one that says, "Failure to prepare is preparing to fail"?

When a milking machine is stolen from a neighboring village's barn, the situation is clear, and everyone recognizes the threat. But if someone tricks Maimu from next door out of €10,000, the reaction is often one of stigma: "Well, Maimu was just gullible, wasn't she?"

It's easier for us to grasp conversations about crime and security in the physical world. At the same time, more than half of impactful crime in Estonia take place in cyberspace. Attacks come from both within the country and beyond its borders, and the culprit often goes uncaught. This, in turn, means there aren't many sensational court cases to cover in the news – so information about cybercriminals doesn't reach the public in a way we're familiar with. As a result, someone scammed online looks like a fool – we simply aren't skilled enough to recognize these crimes.

For exactly these reasons – cybercrimes are common, but our awareness of them is lacking – cyber-related topics should be part of school curriculums. This subject is just as essential as history, math, English or any other life skill.

A basic understanding of why we need passwords is more important than knowing how to format text in Word. It's true, one could argue that locking the door to your house with a key should be taught at home, and that good upbringing should also include digital hygiene. However, it's questionable how capable the average adult is of protecting their child if they haven't received this education themselves.

The concern can be illustrated quite practically. For instance, in the last five years of the Telia Cyber Battle Nordics-Baltics, a hacking competition for youth, it's the Danes, Norwegians and Icelanders who consistently take home the victories. Estonia, known as a strong digital nation, has had active participation from its youth, but it could be even better if awareness of the subject was higher.

Fortunately, the debate about integrating cybersecurity topics into school education is already happening on multiple fronts. For the third year in a row, the Nordic Council of Ministers' Estonia office has been organizing the Cybercation event in Tartu, bringing together international cybersecurity experts. This event has become a space where entrepreneurs, policymakers and education leaders discuss, using practical examples, how information technology and the cyber world have turned our traditional lives upside down, and how we can smartly navigate forward.

Take, for example, the Ministry of Education and Research, which has assembled an advisory council of long-term experts in the field. Their goal is to help bring relevant education into schools and to shape ways artificial intelligence should be used, avoided and understood – how it impacts us, and most importantly, how we can benefit from it.

Young people who are interested in the cyber world need more accurate information and guidance than what they can find in a Reddit forum, and the role of teachers is undoubtedly crucial here.

The future is only as bright as the groundwork we lay for it. In education and youth engagement, it's easy to take a conservative stance – that dealing with the problems of the cyber age is each person's responsibility, or that maybe young people shouldn't be meddling in every area.

But this attitude won't get us anywhere. The damage caused by ignorance could soon cost us billions of euros in the bigger picture. We need to address this now, learn and teach about this new world – and we need to start immediately.

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