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Online Safety

A guide to Parental Controls

This guide will help you set up parental controls and adjust privacy settings to provide your child with a safer online environment.

 

Technology can move at an extraordinarily fast pace and it can be difficult to know how to start talking to your child about what they’re doing online, who they might be speaking to or discussing the potential risks and issues.
Talking regularly with your child is the greatest tool to help keep them safe online. Talking regularly and making it part of daily conversation, like you would about their day at school, will help your child feel relaxed. It also means when they do have any worries, they’re more likely to come and speak to you.

It can also be easy to become overwhelmed with the different technology, the language that children use, the huge number of games and apps which are available and the potential risks. See the links below to find out more about keeping your child safe online.

Are you worried about online sexual abuse or the way someone has been communicating with your child online? Make a report

Images by Freepik

Parentzone is a parenting organisation that adapts to the needs of all parents. Its mission is simple: to improve outcomes for children in an increasingly digital world.

The NSPCC lobbies the government on issues relating to child welfare, and creates campaigns for the general public, with the intention of raising awareness of child protection issues.

Childnet is a charity who empower children, young people, and those who support them in their online lives, and its mission is to work with others to make the internet a great and safe place for children and young people.

MyLOL

There are concerns raised this app is being used by sexual predators. The advice from the National Crime Agency states: We strongly advise that schools and parents talk to children about this app and advise them to delete the app and block the website.On its website, MyLOL claims itself to be the ‘#1 teen dating site in the US, Australia, UK and Canada’ and claims to have more than 300,000 members around the world. It invites users to meet ‘thousands of teenagers like you’ and then goes on to describe how users can ‘chat with members or privately with someone.’ Teens are encouraged to update a profile and share pictures.

Yellow

Labelled ‘Tinder for teens’, which could be used by predators to groom youngsters. Like Tinder, Yellow allows its users to swipe right and left to either ‘like’ or ‘pass’ another user, and if there’s a match, they can begin chatting. A spokesman for NSPCC said: Any app that allows strangers to send photos to children or vice versa is troubling – particularly where the images being exchanged are of a sexual nature. Yellow’s settings enable adults to view children, through a service blatantly aimed at flirting and relationships, also creates an opportunity for sexual predators to target young people.

Roblox

There is a warning that this game may put children at risk from predators. Specific concern is that strangers can contact users of the game.