Does your teenage daughter spend way too much time staring at her smartphone? Tell her to keep it up. It could be a matter of national security.
British intelligence wants to beef up its base of female spies and it’s looking to this generation of social-media savvy teens to get it there.
So, it has dreamed up a contest aimed at schoolgirls aged 13 to 15.
Teams of four girls will work together to complete a series of online challenges on cybersecurity over the course of a week. The top 10 teams will go to London, where they will have to work on a more complicated challenge.
The CyberFirst Girls Competition is an initiative of the Government Communications Headquarters and it follows a 2015 Parliament report, which recommended the United Kingdom recruit more women to work in intelligence agencies.
Women make up less than 40% of the employees across the UK intelligence agencies, according to the Intelligence and Security Committee report. They make up fewer than one-fifth of those in senior roles.