Every week e-safety adviser Alan Mackenzie sends me weekly updates. They are useful teaching resources but also parent guides to keep you up to date with current trends.
Here are a few tips from this week’s updates:
Empowering Young People
Recently I read an interesting article from Connect Futures titled ‘Empowering Young People: Riots, Algorithmic Extremism, Protest and Truth’. It was the ‘algorithmic’ part of the title which caught my attention because, as we’re all aware, algorithmic feeds are becoming much more common on many of the platforms we use. This isn’t anything new, we’ve been talking to students about algorithms, misinformation, fake news etc. for years, but what really interested me was a section called ‘Beyond the Facts’. This is where, faced with the real facts, many people would still rather believe the false information because it is something they’re emotionally attached to, it resonates with them.
It’s a short but very interesting article and well worth a read HERE.
For Parents – Video Games and Children
Unicef have shared an article with some nice, clear and simple advice for parents/carers about online gaming. The article covers how to create a positive and safe gaming environment, how parents can engage with their children, what the benefits or gaming are and more.
You can view the article on the Unicef website HERE.
YouTube – Parental Controls for Teens
Google (YouTube) have, in the past, always argued that YouTube is strictly for over 13’s, much like most other social platforms. This age is predominantly for marketing/advertising purposes. However, that argument has never stood up given that Google have never had a means to prevent under 13’s using the platform wither with or without an account.
Back in 2021 YouTube introduced new parental features, called Supervised Experience, and this was for parents of children under 13 who were using YouTube.
Now, it looks like YouTube is extending Supervised Experience for parents of teenagers. In early September they announced that parents/carers will be able to link their teenagers account to the parent account where parents will have the ability to see some limited information such as number of video uploads, comments etc.
I think some parents may be disappointed that this is quite a limited set of features and I would agree. You can read more about this HERE.
360Safe User Survey
If you are a 360Safe user (free online safety self-review tool) SWGfL are asking for feedback through a short survey in respect of the effectiveness of the tool.
The survey link is HERE.
