E-Safety Advice

E-safety is an integral part of children’s education in today’s digital world and is embedded in their learning at school. We also want to help our parents and children improve their own understanding of e-safety issues so they can learn to use the internet and all digital media in a safe and secure way.

Please find below some top tips for the Christmas holidays from Alan MacKenzie, writer of Online Safety Weekly

Family Agreement

The holidays are a great time to sit down with children and manage expectations. Some children will spend as much time online and playing games as they possibly can, but this isn't practical, there has to be a balance between family and socialisation. Here's a link to a family agreement template from Childnet

https://www.childnet.com/resources/family-agreement

Parental Controls

There are so many connected devices on the market now, each with their own unique way of setting up parental controls and restrictions. Equally the functionality of these devices can be daunting with chat, game downloads, in-app purchases, third party apps on the devices (such as social media, Netflix) etc.

I always advise parents two things. Firstly look up the device on YouTube using a simple 'how to' query, e.g. 'how to restrict in-app purchases on Playstation 4'. Secondly, the wonderful people at Internet Matters have a one-stop shop for setting up devices which can be found here:

https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/

Advice by age

As well as devices, parents also need advice according to the age of their children. Again, Internet Matters has this covered fo children 0-5, 6-10, 11-13 and 14+

https://www.internetmatters.org/advice/

Gaming

Gaming is likely to be high on the agenda for many children this holiday period. CEOP have a nice, simple guide for parents

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/articles/gaming/

Internet Matters also has a gaming hub which is really useful for parents; it was updated a couple of months ago and has invaluable information

https://www.internetmatters.org/resources/online-gaming-advice/

YouTube

If you haven't seen the new YouTube app or site for children (<13) it's worth a look. This is only a few weeks old and it's quite good for the younger children

App: https://youtube.com/kids/
Web: https://www.youtubekids.com/

Social Media

Back to Internet Matters for this one; they have a really useful hub for parents which explains the risks and the benefits, along with some resources that parents can use

https://www.internetmatters.org/resources/social-media-advice-hub/