There are often, nationally, some scary videos that can “trend” at times which can be traumatic to some children. The risks of children accidentally seeing these videos can be reduced by ensuring devices have appropriate parental controls set up. The Internet Matters website provides excellent advice on how to do this.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, it is important that your child can talk to a trusted adult if something scary has happened so that they are reassured. The video from CEOP works well with younger children which we have used at school may be useful to reinforce key messages. If you have concerns then please contact us at school. A reminder that there is a contact buton on our Online Safety page.

As we approach the Easter break, it is an important time to remind ourselves of the importance of being around our young people when they are accessing online materials. This can also be a great help if they do inadvertenly access inappropriate content.

It’s impossible to talk about the internet without thinking of search engines and how they have completely changed our lives in the last couple of decades.

Whether it’s looking for a home baking recipe, finding out the meaning of an unfamiliar word or searching for a news article on a hot topic, our first instinct is to type the terms into our web browser and instantly have access to an almost limitless fountain of knowledge. Gone are the days when we would have to rely on an old family cookbook or a heavy hard-cover dictionary, or had to take a trip to the closest newsstand. Searching for things online is fast, free and seamless.

But how can we make sure that children make the most out of the inexhaustible sources of knowledge, while doing all we can to protect them from unsafe or upsetting content they may be exposed to when searching for things on the internet?

Find out more here

Seeing coverage of upsetting world events in the news, online or on social media can be distressing for children, especially in today’s 24-hour news cycle. But there are things parents can do to help children make sense of them.

Use this link to visit Parent Zone’s guide to five steps to help them cope, as well as resources for further support.

Parent Zone – Helping children cope with media coverage of traumatic events

Tuesday 8th February is Safer Internet Day.
We are looking at Onling gaming this year and how to stay safe.

• Don’t meet anyone that you just have met during online games.
• Don’t share personal information.
• Treat people with respect.
• If anything worries you, talk to an adult about what you are worried about.

Parent Zone have a free live event on Tuesday 8th February from 4:30m – 5:00pm
Why not all watch it as a family – we all need to stay safe online.

Age ratings are used across many different types of online content and platforms, from films and TV shows, to social media, to games. This is an area that might seem like a simple way for parents and carers to know what’s safe and appropriate for their child is actually much more complex.

However, with different age ratings applied in different places, and the ratings not always taking into account everything a parent might want to consider when deciding whether a platform or piece of content is suitable for their child, there’s a lot for parents to understand. Parent Zone has produced a guide to Age Ratings which will help you and your children to work with understand how you, and they, can use age ratings to make the right decisions.

The guide covers why age ratings can vary, the different rating systems used, some of the issues to consider when making decisions about content and platforms that aren’t covered in age ratings – and how parents and carers can approach conversations about age appropriateness in an informed way.

As part of our Online Safety support for our young people, we shared this game with them – Interland. It is part of the Google – Be Internet Legends. The game goes through four pillars of Be Sharp – Be Secure – Be Alert – Be Kind.

To access the game, use this link – Interland Game

In this fast-changing digital world it is hard to keep up with how best to support our young people to keep safe whilst online. There’s a lot of advice about online safety out there, some of it contradictory and much of it is years out-of-date.

The internet is now a major part of almost every aspect of daily life – and that’s just as true of family life as it is work or entertainment.

The attached article gives 5 key tips to help

• Building a child’s digital resilience will keep them safer than blocking or filtering
• Don’t limit the talk you have with your child to ‘the online safety conversation’
• Balance taking an interest in your child’s online activities with giving them the space to be independent
• Don’t be afraid to set boundaries
• Concentrate on how children use digital media rather than for how long

For more detail and support you can read the full article here

We want to share a recent initiative from Parent Zone. Ollee is an app to support the wellbeing of your children.

It’s not always easy to get children to open up, and that’s where Ollee comes in: to help you have those tricky conversations and to give you and your child extra support when you need it. Ollee is a digital friend for children aged 8-11, created by Parent Zone and BBC Children in Need’s A Million & Me initiative.

Ollee can help your child explore feelings around subjects – like school, family, friends and the world – and support conversations about these with you, through connected accounts. For more information please use this link https://parentzone.org.uk/ollee/for-parents

Is Santa bringing the kids a new device? For our final of 2021, we’ve got some top tips on how to set up their new gadgets safely ! From parental controls to account creation, keep your children safe this Christmas  https://hubs.ly/Q0115nM40

Parent Zone has recently produced a guide to using 6 of the more common apps. Skype, Tik-Tok, Snap Chat, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram are all covered in this article. For each app the article explains what the app is, how people use it and the things to look out for.