Please find below information and guides from various sources to help parents ensure their children stay safer in their online lives.
The increasingly young age at which children become active in the digital world heightens the risk of them innocently running int something that they find upsetting or frightening. Adults need to be able to help children be aware of what to do if they’re exposed to ag-inappropriate content. This guide from National Online Safety provides useful information for parents and carers.
What Parents and Carers Need to Know about Age-Inappropriate Content
The internet is a vast space, home to all manner of differing viewpoints. However, website owners have realised that people tend to enjoy the online company of others who think and sound like them. It’s in the website providers’ interests, then, to create echo chambers: sites where the user’s own views are echoed, reinforced and built on without being challenged.
This is common on social media. Combine echo chambers with the dangers of misinformation and fake news and the result could easily see children becoming trapped in an online bubble – only ever confirming what they think they know, discouraging them from questioning, and never offering a different perspective.
This guide from National Online Safety gives parents an overview along with tips and advice.
https://www.thorpehall.southend.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Safeguarding-Echo-Chambers-1.pdf
Hoop is a social networking app that syncs with Snapchat to help users build their community of friends. It works along similar principles to Tinder: swiping left or right will reject or accept potential contacts, making new connections in the process. When two users accept each other, they can then communicate via Snapchat. There is no chat function on Hoop itself: video and audio calls, messaging and image sharing all take place through Snapchat. When a user adds a new Hoop contact, they are essentially sharing their personal information from Snapchat
https://www.thorpehall.southend.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Safeguarding-Hoop-1.pdf
Please visit www.nationalonlinesafety.com for further guides.
Information for parents to help them keep their children safer online:
For parents of primary school-aged children:
Useful information for parents on mobile apps. Find out how to restrict access to apps, block downloads, stop auto-updates and more.
For Android:
For iPhone:
Is Snapchat safe for children? How does it work? And what’s with Snapstreaks? Everything curious parents need to know about this ultra-popular app.
This article from Common Sense Media sheds some light on Snapchat for parents.
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-snapchat
A practical guide for parents and carers whose children are using social media from the Department for Education.
For teens, the wave of activity on TikTok, Instagram and games like Roblox can take up hours of their day. Too much screen time can mean they aren’t socialising, staying active or spending enough time doing their homework. But tech can also offer lots of amazing ways for them to learn new skills, get creative – and even revise for their exams. The future of work (and everything else) will only be more tech-centric, so learning how to use it in a healthy, balanced way will help set them up for life.
Read the Screen Time Diet guide for parents here:
Below are links to other national support agencies and organisations focusing on the internet and online safety: