Keeping your child safe online
General app information:
WhatsApp offers a quick, easy, and free way for young people to connect with friends and family, whether by sharing photos, videos or memes. WhatsApp requires a minimum age of 16 but relies on the honesty of the child and family to adhere to the age restrictions. Registering an account on behalf of someone who is underage is also a violation of their terms.
TikTok is a video-sharing platform where you can watch and create videos, and livestream. The app has an agerating of 13+.
Instragram: Knowing people's age allows them to provide appropriate experiences to different age groups, specifically teens. They require people to be at least 13 years old to sign up for Instagram.
Snapchat: The platform is rated 13+. How does Snapchat work? The platform mainly operates as a messaging app where users can communicate with each other using videos and images. However, there are also other features available including private chat, games, and voice notes. In 2020, Snapchat had an average of 218 million daily active users that generated over three billion snaps a day.
Bereal: Bereal is a social media notifying you at a random moment every day to take a photo within 2 minutes, meaning that you cannot edit or filter photos but you can only post photos from camera at the moment you got notified. BeReal is open to users over the age of 13 only. If you are under 13, you are not allowed to create a User Account and use the Application.
For more information about any of these sites or for social media guides, please click on the link below.
https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/social-media-guides
Digital parenting - a guide provided by vodaphone which deals with a variety of areas of digital safety - for parents
Our online safety curriculum content:
Welcome to Natterhub!
We are excited to introduce a new addition to our school’s Relationships and Health Education provision. As children spend an increased amount of time online, we felt it necessary to take further steps to ensure their online safety and help them navigate the digital world. Natterhub is a safe, educational platform for primary schools. It looks and functions like 'real' social media but it is gated to the school environment meaning that children can explore and play in a safe, online space to properly understand the benefits and potential pitfalls of being online. Natterhub also includes interactive lessons on all aspects of online safety for Years 1-6.
These lessons aim to support your children in all aspects of their digital world and are aligned to the updated compulsory RSE National Curriculum, which makes online safety a compulsory element in primary school teaching. Children work their way through the Natterhub 'Badges of Honour', which track and assess their journey to become a fully-fledged digital citizen!
This includes:
● How to communicate appropriately using technology
● The importance of time on and off screens
● How to learn effectively, using the Internet
● To make intelligent choices about what they do online
● The importance of respectful online dialogue
● To use privacy settings to stay safe online
By using the Natterhub platform, your children are being taught how to live with and live through technology in order to be safe and thrive online.
Parental guide to Natterhub
Curriculum overview
UKCIS Safety Aims
Through Natterhub's badges and lessons, the 8 UKCIS areas are taught throughout the key stage and in every year group. The tracker below shows where each area is covered through the different strands of the programme.
Why Choose This Journey?
We find ourselves in a world where information drives society and for many media businesses, it’s a valuable commodity. In the centuries before us it was coal; iron; cotton; oil: now its data.
Navigating this complex landscape is difficult at best. Many of us find our way through this tangle of information through trial and error; forging our own unique path and learning as we go. However, as we have seen only too often, some of those “errors” have the potential to lead to harm.
It’s no accident, then, that Media Literacy; Digital Literacy and Citizenship are a key element of the UK government’s “Online Harms” white paper. Amongst a raft of other regulatory measures, Media Literacy education threads itself through the whole strategy.
But what does good digital literacy education look like? How do we craft something that not only is relevant but achieves positive and realistic outcomes?
Over a decade ago, there was no Snapchat; no TikTok; no 5G; no Cambridge Analytica and whilst the landscape doesn’t hinge on one development, the interplay of all of these technologies changed attitudes, behaviours and priorities.
Who’d have thought we would be worrying about fake news across the whole media landscape or who we could trust eight years ago? Ransomware hadn’t raised its ugly head and the prospect of “deep fakes” hadn’t emerged. Gaming had not yet experienced the online ascendancy of GTA V or Call of Duty and “Blue Whale” was still six years away.
Gradually, Digital Literacy became more difficult to update and less relevant with each passing month.
Time for a rethink.