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:
Report – “I’ve Seen Horrible Things.”
On the 29th October the Children’s Commissioner released their latest report titled, “I’ve seen horrible things”: Children’s experiences of the online world. This is a follow-on report from The Big Ambition report which received 253,000 responses from children and adults. At 59 pages it’s quite a big report so here’s a very brief summary:
71% of respondents say they feel safe online. However, some children as young as five and children with special education needs and disabilities disproportionately report they feel unsafe.
Girls were less likely to agree that they felt safe online relative to boys (67% vs 75%).
There is a correlation that children who state they feel safe online is linked with children feeling good about other areas of their lives.
This is interesting as it allows us to question what offline vulnerabilities may lead to a higher likelihood of online harm?
Children do not feel in control of their online lives, e.g. phone addiction and algorithmic content influence.
The prevalence of online CSA is a big concern for many, as is evolving technology and risks such as AI.
There’s a lot more to the report, with much taken up by statements from children and young people themselves, which allows us to get into the all-important ‘why?” question. For example, my own experience shows that very few young people have a good grasp of how algorithms are used to feed content to someone’s timeline or For You page, how this can lead to echo chambers and, most importantly of all, what they can do about it. So whilst the report concentrates on the fact that the government needs implement the Online Safety Act quicker, it can also be really useful for us on the front line as it gives us the very questions and concerns that children and young people are raising themselves.
You can find the full report (which has a good executive summary) HERE.
Sickening Chatbots
Over the last couple of weeks you may have read in the media about this new concern around an AI platform called Character.ai. If you’ve never heard of this platform, it’s basically a chatbot service where users (13+) can create and/or chat with existing characters where the chatbot will give human-like responses.
I’ve mentioned in previous weekly updates that I have found children from Year 3 upwards using and conversing with chatbots (mainly Snap MyAI which is embedded within Snapchat), but Character.AI takes this to a whole new dimension as people are creating chatbots based on real people such as Jimmy Saville, Molly Russell (who sadly took her own life) and Brianna Ghey (who was murdered) to name a few.
It is already known that some children and young people are becoming obsessed with chatbots, such as giving them names and referring to them as real people. The concerns around this is growing weekly which emphasises the fact that when we are talking to children and young people we need to be aware of these emerging areas so that we can adequately engage with them.
You can view a good article on the BBC website about Character.ai HERE and Internet Matters have put together a ‘What Parents Need to Know” article which will be useful HERE. The Internet Matters article would also be a good one to share with staff so that they are aware of this platform.
