Afnic steps up its communication targeting young people

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11/14/2025

Afnic has put in place several measures since the spring to raise young people’s awareness when it comes to using digital technology. And to reinforce these steps, Afnic launched an awareness-raising and information campaign to coincide with Cybersecurity Month in partnership with the magazine Science&Vie Junior, the benchmark media for inquisitive young people ages 13 to 17.

Three questions for Gabrielle Apfelbaum, Communications Director, on Afnic and young people:

What is the motivation for this new focus on a younger audience?

All the studies show that young people are major Internet users, but that they are not necessarily the most aware. Both in terms of how it works and the potential risks. (See the second IPSOS barometer for Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr). And one of Afnic’s missions is to educate people. It was our partnership with JobIRL (Job In Real Life), a public interest organisation in the social and educational fields, that set things in motion. JobIRL runs prevention activities in upper secondary schools to help pupils with their studies and career choices. Thanks to the good relationship formed, JobIRL contacted us to create and distribute posters in schools. That’s what brought about the “video game” communication campaign in spring 2025 in a large number of upper secondary schools. The aim was to get pupils thinking about the potential risks of video games, such as exposing personal data or their private lives online. The campaign got a lot of positive feedback, which encouraged us to take the concept further. With Sciences&Vie Junior, we worked on “how the Internet works” to help young people better understand the technology they use on a daily basis.

Why Sciences&Vie Junior?

The idea was to use the magazine’s ecosystem, and its paper-based readership in particular. The magazine has 65,000 subscribers and is printed in 92,000 copies, with an average of 985,000 readers per issue. Advertising agencies calculate a readership rate for each media that corresponds to the number of individuals that read a paper magazine without having purchased it. For the October issue we went with the theme of “So how does the Internet work?”. As part of the information section. We also wanted to generate engagement through a video produced for the magazine’s social media community. And a fun quiz focusing on uses. The quiz is popular with the magazine’s fans as they can learn while having fun as they score themselves. The quiz is currently shared on the Sciences&Vie Instagram and TikTok accounts and will also be shared on Afnic’s social media. We are expecting 350,000 views for at least part of the video.

The Sciences&Vie social networks have also published carousel posts.

Does Afnic use social media for its campaigns?

Afnic reaches out to its audiences wherever they are, and the same goes in this case. With JobIRL, we had the opportunity to reach young people at school through posters distributed at upper secondary establishments across the country. For Cybersecurity Month, we chose a mixed system with a paper article in the magazine, “cards” on social media and the video created in the same style as the Sciences&Vie Junior videos. What’s interesting is that the magazine’s digital community is not the same as its reader community! They are separate audiences, hence the need to use different mediums.