Cyber Safety

When Susan McLean visited the College last month, she covered a range of topics pertinent to young people using digital spaces. She made particular note of the legal age restrictions surrounding the use of many social media platforms. Apps such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok stipulate in their terms of use that users must be over 13 years of age. Therefore, if your child is on these platforms and is under age, they are breaking the law by ignoring the terms and conditions.

Enabling children younger than 13 to access these environments, can expose them to unsuitable content and even invite contact and interaction with unknown people. Sites such as TikTok have also recently been fined for the illegal collection of children’s data. By allowing children access to these sites before they are ready emotionally and socially, is leaving them in potentially dangerous situations.

The safe age restrictions also apply to the gaming platform, Fortnite. Their terms state that users must be 12 years of age. Again, early exposure to games and gaming platforms designed for older children can become problematic. Online trolling and exclusion within the game can be an issue for children who are not mature enough to deal with the features and interactions of the platform. There are also numerous examples of unknown adults contacting younger children through the game’s features.

As part of our Digital Licence, students in Years 4 and 5 cover various elements of what Digital Citizenship means. In addition to our student resources, there are also many parent resources available. These will be shared incrementally throughout the year. The first of these is an infographic on Fortnite: https://media-digitallicence-com.s3.amazonaws.com/10_Fortnite.pdf. This provides many informative links to dealing with the challenges that Fortnite can present.