Children and e-safety: a time for reflection, not panic.
Media horror stories bombard us daily when it comes to children and e-safety, but is going online really as dangerous for children as some journalists would have us believe? A new report from the London School of Economics has found that children might be better at self-regulating their internet usage than we usually give them credit for.
After speaking with 378 children about e-safety, academics from LSE found that many children actively seek out ways to stay safe online by "planning" and "reflecting." For example, when using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, older children take precautions such as changing their privacy settings to protect themselves online.
Even younger children, between the ages of 9 – 11, are competent at avoiding problematic websites or applications by simply clicking away. This is an obvious but "effective tactic" when it comes to staying safe on the internet. Most children were able to recognise both the risks and the symptoms of internet addiction, including health problems, losing interest in other things and losing friends.
Though girls are "more likely to seek social support [...] than boys," both sexes are generally reluctant to approach an adult for help when an incident of cyberbullying occurs. Children are commonly able to react proactively to abusive messages by blocking the sender or disabling their own account, but sometimes this isn't enough and internet conflicts escalate rapidly.
As adults, we can encourage children to feel comfortable sharing their online problems with us by being more reasonable, and less sensational, when it comes to the internet. For one thing, when we talk to children about the internet, we should acknowledge the many good points as well as cautioning against the dangers. Monitoring our children's online activity is fine for very young children, but as they get older, we can earn their trust by respecting their need for a certain amount of privacy.
Parents and teachers can try to ban Facebook and other websites, or limit their children and student's internet usage, but they should be aware of the potential consequences. Using social networking sites, among other online skills, has become almost mandatory both in the wider world and in the modern workplace. Banning children from social networking instead of teaching them how to network safely is doing them no favours in the long run.
Learn more about e-safety, protecting children online, how children and young people use technology, and it's associated risks in EduCare’s Child Exploitation & Online safety online training.
Visit the Child Exploitation & Online Safety product page by clicking here.
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