Less than 100 days to go until Safer Internet Day 2019!

With just 98 days to go until Safer Internet Day we look at the different ways you can get involved and some of the exciting things that will be launching soon.

What is Safer Internet Day?

Coordinated in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre, the celebration sees hundreds of organisations get involved to help promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

The campaign continues to grow from strength to strength and, for Safer Internet Day 2018, an incredible 1,700 organisations got involved in supporting the day which reached 45% of young people aged 8-17 in the UK.

The day offers the opportunity to highlight the positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community. It calls upon young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers, and wider, to join together in helping to create a better internet.

What you can do now

There are 3 key things that you can do right now to get involved and help make Safer Internet Day 2019 the biggest yet!

1. Register as a supporter
2. Spread the word using the Safer Internet Day Campaign Toolkit
3. Sign up for the SID newsletter

What is coming soon?

In the lead up to Safer Internet Day there are some really exciting things that will be launched on the UK Safer Internet Website, these include:

• Educational resources for all ages. These Education packs include lesson plans, assemblies, presentations and much more.
• SID TV films to be used in educational and home settings.
• Social media campaign materials to help you get involved on the day.
• A quiz and top tips for young people.
• More materials to help you spread the word, including the Thunderclap which last year reached over 9 million people.

Get the latest Safer Internet Day news

To keep up to date with the latest Safer Internet Day news you can:

• Follow @UK_SIC Twitter
• Like the UK Safer Internet Centre on Facebook
• Follow @UK_SIC on Instagram
• Subscribe to our monthly newsletter
• Join the UK wide conversation with the #SaferInternetDay2019 Hashtag

Safer Internet Day

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Digital wellbeing – Guidance for parents

Created as part of Childnet’s work in the UK Safer Internet Centre, the newly published hot topic looks at Digital Wellbeing, giving guidance to parents about the impact that the online world can have on the lives of children and young people.

What is digital wellbeing?

Our overall wellbeing is determined by the physical and emotional experiences we have on a daily basis. As technology continues to be such a huge part of our lives, from the way we represent who we are to the interactions we have with others, it too has an impact on our wellbeing. This is often referred to as your ‘digital wellbeing’ or 'online wellness.’

It is essentially about having an awareness of how being online can make us feel and looking after ourselves and others when online. This can include recognising the impact being online can have on our emotions, mental wellbeing and even on our physical health and knowing what to do if something goes wrong. 

Supporting children at different ages

As technology plays an ever increasing role in the lives of young people, it is important that we help them to understand how to use it safely, sensibly and with an awareness of how it can impact on them.

We have created guidance for parents and carers to help them support children and young people across different age groups. There is age specific guidance for parents of:

• 3-7 year olds
• 7-11 year olds
• 11-14 year olds
• 14-18 year olds

Advice for each age bracket includes include information about how the age group are interacting with the internet, top tips to help you support the young people at this age, and ideas to help you start a conversation about digital wellbeing.

Further Hot Topics

Our Hot Topics for parents cover a range of the issues that are affecting young people online, these include:

• Cyberbullying
• Screen time boundaries
• Online Pornography
• Parental Controls
• Sexting
• Social networking
• Downloading
• Livestreaming

Visit www.childnet.com/parents-and-carers/hot-topics to see the list of topics we have covered. 

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The latest from the UK Safer Internet Centre straight to your inbox

Safer Internet Day 2019 supporters registration now open!

Schools and organisations are now able to register as Safer Internet Day supporters to share what they are doing for the day!

Last year over 1,700 organisations joined the Safer Internet Day 2018 Supporters List; this support and the activities that took place across the UK made 2018 the biggest UK Safer Internet Day yet.

And now we need your help to make Safer Internet Day 2019 even bigger and better!

Join us for Safer Internet Day 2019

You can join organisations from across the UK by signing up to the Safer Internet Day Supporters List and sharing what you are doing for #SaferInternetDay2019.

Once registered you will receive a certificate to show your support for the day and, following review, your logo, organisation name and supportive statement will appear on the UK Safer Internet Centre Website.

Register now! 

Need inspiration?

Take a look at last year’s supporters list to see what organisations across the UK did to celebrate Safer Internet Day.

Help us to spread the word:

Tweet this: We have registered as a Safer Internet Day supporter, have you? Let @UK_SIC know what you are doing for #SaferInternetDay2019 and help make this Safer Internet Day bigger than ever! 

You could also:

• Join the social media campaign and keep an eye on the hashtag #SaferInternetDay2018 
• Follow @UK_SIC on Twitter and @Saferinternetuk on Facebook
• Spread the word with the Safer Internet Day campaign toolkit
• Use your networks or run activities to reach out to children, young people, parents, carers, teachers, professionals and wider!

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Take a look behind the scenes of the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme

Education settings and youth groups can now register their interest in the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme to receive a free guest login.

What is the Digital Leaders Programme?

The Childnet Digital Leaders Programme empowers children and young people to champion digital citizenship and digital creativity within their schools and to educate their peers, parents and teachers about staying safe online. The programme aims to make online safety learning fun and effective, and helps schools work towards an outstanding whole school community approach to online safety.

With 2000 qualified Digital Leaders across the UK and wider, the programme allows young people to be a part of a wider network, sharing ideas and best practice with other Digital Leaders.

 

“Digital Leaders have enjoyed it and are enthusiastic. They worked really well as a team. They are becoming more confident and have enjoyed planning how to help each other.”

- Teacher, Primary Digital Leaders School.

The Digital Leaders Platform

Schools joining the programme will have access to our online training platforms for primary or secondary schools. Young people will have the opportunity to increase their knowledge, influence their communities through the Team Achievements, gain recognition and collaborate with other Digital Leaders across the UK.

What does a guest login do?

The guest login allows educators to take a look at the Digital Leaders platform, with a chance to explore some of the key learning modules and other features of the site.

This gives a taste of what the programme feels like for a young person undergoing their training, and can help you to decide as to whether the programme is right for you and the young people you work with.

How can I find out more?

Find out more about the Digital Leaders platform and register for a guest login on our brand new website www.digital-leaders.childnet.com/join

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Free Password Management & Security Guide Released

October is Cyber-Security month, and with our increasing focus on security and data protection, we have developed a new FREE resource for schools and other organisations entitled “Password Management & Security Guide”.

With the explosion of internet-connected data management systems over the past 10 years, along with continuous reports of high profile data breaches, security and data protection have become serious issues for schools and other organisations. Guidance to develop the correct policies and have the right systems in place to train staff have become even more important for many of these organisations and schools.

To respond to this need, we have been working hard to develop products, resources and training to help schools raise awareness, develop policy and train staff.

In 2016 we released an article entitled “Guide to Creating and Managing Passwords”, the new resource has been developed from this to give readers a clear and simple understanding of how passwords are stored, compromised, and cracked. This knowledge then frames our recommendations on creating and managing secure passwords, including guidance on how administrators should deliver passwords to users.

Access the FREE Password Management & Security Resource Here

The article was originally posted on the SWGfL website.

Cyber-Security

data

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IWF Statement on UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Day of General Discussion

Child protection must stay top of world agenda, says UK charity

Today children from around the world will have a voice in the international community when the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child hosts its first ever global discussion on empowering under-18s as ‘human rights defenders’.

In a major UN first, children will make up a quarter of the invited participants at the United Nations in Geneva with children as speakers, moderators, social media commentators and contributors to the forum. 

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) welcomes the Day of General Discussion, which puts children at centre stage. As a leader in the fight against exploitation of young people, through its global work to remove child sexual abuse images and videos from the internet, the IWF believes this important initiative is a step in the right direction.

Article 34 of the UN’s convention on the Rights of the Child states that Governments must protect children from all forms of sexual abuse and exploitation. Our work falls directly in line with the UN’s convention on the Rights of the Child and that is why we are today reminding Governments everywhere of their obligations towards children.

Michael Tunks, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, said: “We believe wholeheartedly that children have rights that must be respected, protected and promoted. Sadly, each and every day the rights of young people are under attack across the world, so we fully support all UN efforts to raise awareness of the need for greater child protection. This day of discussion and involvement is an important step in children having their voices heard as human rights defenders, but we all need to keep children’s rights at the top of all of our agendas - not just for today, but for every day. 

“At the IWF, we are playing our part in the work we do to remove images and videos of child sexual abuse online. We never forget that behind every indecent image we remove from the internet is a real child who has been the victim of abuse. We owe it to them to ensure that we are doing all that we can to ensure that they are able to recover, by not having their suffering compounded by having their abuse viewed online.”

This article was originally published on the IWF website.

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Young people give their thoughts on Voice Assisted Technology

As part of their work in the UK Safer Internet Centre Childnet recently launched a piece of research which found that 70% of young people have used voice assisted technology in the last year.

As part of this research, Childnet spoke to their Digital Leaders about their thoughts on voice assisted technology, looking at how they are using it and any top tips they have for their peers.

The Survey:

The survey of over 1,000 children and young people aged 8-17 years conducted by Populus found that 7 in 10 young people are using voice assisted technology, with 92% of those saying they did so to find out information.

Key findings from the survey

• 70% of 8-17s reported using voice assisted technology in the last year, with this being very similar between the 8-12s and 13-17 age ranges.
• 92% of those who had used voice assisted technology reported that they did so primarily to find out information, followed by using it to ask funny questions (90%), play music (73%) and get advice or help (73%).
• On a daily basis 1 in 5 young people (20%) are using voice assisted technology to play music and 8% are using it to get advice or help.

The Digital Leaders give their top tips

We asked the Childnet Digital Leaders for their tops tips for their peers who want to use voice assisted technology. They created the below tips from their own personal experiences of using this technology.

• Tip 1: Be clear and specific
• Tip 2: Stay in control of your information
• Tip 3: Think about where you are when you use it and watch out for it accidentally activating
• Tip 4: Be critical – information online can sometimes be unreliable
• Tip 5: Have fun and stay safe!

The Digital Leaders suggest their improvements

We asked our Digital Leaders how they thought that voice assisted technology could be improved and they mention accuracy, poor voice recognition and slow processing time as obstacles to using voice assisted technology effectively.

They also cited privacy, how information about them could be given away and reliability of information as ways in which voice assisted technology could be improved.

Read more about the Digital Leaders thoughts in the full research report here.

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Read the Safer Internet Day 2018 full impact report

Safer Internet Day 2018 reached more people than ever before, with over 3.3 million children and 2.6 million parents hearing about the day!

Our impact report looks at the reach of Safer Internet Day 2018 and the positive impact that it had on children, young people, parents, carers, and teachers across the UK.

There was a huge range of Safer Internet Day supporters this year, with 1,772 organisations spreading the word of the day, running activities and joining in on social media.  The joint action of these supports resulted in Safer Internet Day 2018 being the biggest one yet:

• 83% of young people who heard about the day felt they had a better understanding of how to use the internet safely as a result of Safer Internet Day.
• 81% of young people felt more confident about staying safe online
• 74% of parents spoke to their children about using the internet safely as a result of the day.

The impact report also included testimonials from teachers whose schools got involved in Safer Internet Day:

“Children continued their discussions of their own online experiences during playtimes and in class time, as well as talking to their parents/carers about it. (…) the resources were great and it is good to have a whole-school focus for the day.”

The full impact report accompanies the two page report published earlier this year.

Safer Internet Day

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Spread the Word – Safer Internet Day Campaign toolkit

Safer Internet Day 2019 will be celebrated on the 5^th February with the theme: Together for a better internet.

We have created some resources to help you get involved in the day, and ways in which you can help us to make Safer Internet Day 2019 the biggest yet!

What is Safer Internet Day?

Coordinated in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre, the celebration sees hundreds of organisations get involved to help promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

The campaign continues to grow from strength to strength and, for Safer Internet Day 2018, an incredible 1,700 organisations got involved in supporting the day which reached 45% of young people aged 8-17 in the UK. Meanwhile our social media Thunderclap reached more than 9 million people, our education packs were downloaded more than 800,000 times and our SIDTV films were watched more than 400,000 times. 

The day offers the opportunity to highlight the positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community. It calls upon young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers, and wider, to join together in helping to create a better internet.

What is the campaign toolkit and how can I use it?

The campaign toolkit is created each year to help you and your organisation to get involved in Safer Internet Day by spreading the word and raising awareness. The campaign toolkit contains some key things to help you do this, including:

• Banners and header images in a range of colours that you can upload onto your social media accounts
• Example Tweets and Facebook posts that you can share to show your support of the day
• Sample text that you can include in newsletters, send to your local press, and share on your websites

What else is coming soon?

In the lead up to Safer Internet Day there are some really exciting things that will be launched on the UK Safer Internet Website, including:

• Opportunity to show your support of the day by registering for the Safer Internet Day supporters list
• Full impact report of SID 2018
• Educational resources and films
• More materials to help you spread the word, including the Thunderclap which last year reached over 9 million people.

Stay up to date with the latest news:

• Follow @UK_SIC Twitter
• Like the UK Safer Internet Centre on Facebook
• Follow @UK_SIC on Instagram
• Subscribe to our monthly newsletter
• Join the UK wide conversation with the #SaferInternetDay2019 Hashtag

Safer Internet Day

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