Online Safety

Each month, we direct you towards the latest edition of the DITTO magazine. This magazine highlights promiment issues within the online community that could relate to primary school children (as well as high school).

What is Digital Resilience?

"Digital resilience involves having the ability to understand when you are at risk online, knowing what to do if anything goes wrong, learning from your experiences of being online, and being able to recover from any difficulties or upsets. Children who are digitally resilient will be equipped to handle the challenges of the modern, digital world." - Parent Zone

You need to be able to explore life online

Digital resilience grows through online use and learned experience and can’t be developed through the avoidance of the digital world. In other words, you don’t help your children to become digital resilient by keeping them away from the internet.

It’s many parent’s instinct to use as many tools and filters as they can to ‘protect’ their child from nasty things they may find on the internet. This may be useful for very young children, and tools are important for all internet users – we’d all do well to check our privacy settings more often – but when it comes to raising digitally resilient children, it is vital that parents ensure they are allowed to explore the online world.

The reality is, if you attempt to make parental controls your first line of defense, your child will do what children are programmed to do – they’ll attempt to find a way around them and could end up in much less safe parts of the net, such as the murkier parts of the dark web. More importantly, you won’t be helping them to develop digital resilience.

6 ways to promote digital resilience at home

Employ the same parenting skills you use offline to keep them safe, such as negotiating boundaries, talking about the difficult subjects we’d all rather avoid, helping your child to recognise what’s good and bad behaviour.

1. Set fair and consistent rules in relation to your child’s internet use at home. As they get older, try to agree the rules with them so that they have some control over their digital world.
2. Teach your child to think critically about what they read, see or hear online. For young children, that might mean encouraging them to ask ‘what would Mum or Dad say about that?’ As they get older they need to be able to assess for themselves whether they are in a risky online place and whether the information they are receiving is reliable and helpful to them.  (The Parent Zone Digital Parenting course(link is external) explains in full why some online spaces are riskier than others.)
3. It’s much harder for people to empathise with each other when their communications are digital. It’s why trolls find it so easy to post horrible messages. Helping your child to understand that and to pause and think about the impact of things that are posted online, will help them cope with some of the difficult behaviour they will come across and avoid getting caught up in it.
4. Maintain a positive outlook on your child’s use of the internet.
   Whatever you think to the stuff they watch or the hours they spend on Musical.ly or the PS4, if you constantly criticise the apps and games they love, they’re not going to want to talk to you about their online life.
5. Children who can recover from an online mistake can learn and avoid making the same mistake again. You can help by making it easy for them to talk to you about their mishaps (that means trying to keep calm even if you’re at your wits’ end!), making sure they know where to go for help if they need it, and recognising if they’re not recovering well so you can step in and get help for them.
6. Allow your child to explore and take charge of their online life.

Having some control over any given situation is an important part of resilience – and it’s a really important part of digital resilience. It’s essential in helping them understand and develop their own sense of what’s right and wrong online.

Digital resilience is not fixed. It’s not a single ability or a set of lessons that can be learnt. It is something that every child can have and parents can do more than anyone else to foster it. Set clear boundaries for their life online and then step away, letting them explore the online world safe in the knowledge that you will be there to help if anything goes wrong.

Be Internet Legends

At The Meadows, we want children to become Internet Legends. With the help of Google's Internet Legends programme, we want children to become confident and safe in exploring the digital worlds around them.

The Internet Legends Code

The Internet Legends Code encompasses five areas that children need to understand in order to become safe and independent users in the digital world.

Think Before You Share

Good (and bad) news travels fast online, and children can sometimes find themselves in tricky situations with lasting consequences. But what can they do to prevent this? The answer: understand how to share smartly with those they know – and those they don’t.

Check It's For Real

People and situations online aren’t always what they seem. Internet Legends know how to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.

Protect Your Stuff

Personal privacy and security are as important online as they are in the real world. Keeping valuable information safe helps children avoid damaging their devices, reputations and relationships.
 

Respect Each Other

The internet amplifies everything: good things seem more exciting, bad things seem much worse and can hurt – a lot. A great rule to live by online, as well as off, is ‘treat others as you would like to be treated yourself’. Children can have a positive impact on others and stop bullying in its tracks by refusing to join in.

When in Doubt, Discuss

When children come across something they're not sure about online, they should feel comfortable talking to a trusted adult. Adults can support this by showing they're open to talking, even about difficult or embarrassing things at home and in the classroom.

Curriculum Overview

Interland

Be Internet Awesome

Click the image below to be taken to an interactive world that will test your Internet Legend skills!

Parent Resources

Online Safety activites for the whole family

Internet Legends Pledge

Parent Zone is devoted to providing expert information to families and schools. We find, curate and check the best available information on all of the issues that are caused or amplified by the internet.

The Parent Zone mission

To improve outcomes for children in a digital world.

Which means…

• Children will be safer online.
• Children will be resilient enough to cope with the challenges of the online world.
• Children will be educated for a digital future.

Our approach

To work with the people and organisations that can deliver those outcomes:

• Parents
• Schools
• Companies

Below are newsletters that can be downloaded regarding current issues with E-Safety. 

Below are links to different resources and articles to support in developing your child's digital resilience.

5 Digital Rules for Parents

A Parent Guide to Kik Messenger

Choosing appropriate content for your child

A Parent Guide to Vlogging

Suggested Apps