Be security savvy with new devices, expert urges parents...
ACOMBINATION of common sense, safeguarding and – most importantly – continuous monitoring and dialogue is the best way to give you peace of mind that your child is safe online, according to an online safety charity. And when your child unwrapped their new electronic device on Christmas morning, it was ‘not really the end point, but the starting point’, according to Philip Arneill, who is head of education and innovation at CyberSafeKids.
Mr Arneill told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The giving of the devices is understandable and there’s nothing wrong with it. But what I think has to be in the forefront of parents’ and guardians’ minds is that it’s not a case of, “Well, I’ve given the device now and that’s that.”
‘It’s got to be an ongoing dialogue with your child or young person about how that device is being used. That’s just vital to keeping them safe, quite frankly.
‘We know from our research that when you give your child access to the online world through a device or game or app or whatever it is, there are inherent risks and harms. And parents have got to be aware of that,’ he said.
CyberSafeKids encourages parents to hold off completely on buying smartphones for their children until they have left primary school, at the earliest.
But according to the organisation’s own research, smartphones are the third most common device among eight- to 12-yearolds, after games consoles and tablets.
‘Smartphones have that mobility – it can go out of the house and be used more
‘A lot of children accept followers they don’t know’
frequently,’ Mr Arneill said. ‘There’s not a lot of kids walking about with tablets and obviously games consoles you would hook up to the TV. So that raises questions about monitoring and supervision.’
When a child is given a device, their parent or guardian should have rules and expectations in place from the outset.
‘And if it’s not working, then you’ve got to revisit that with the child, whether that be the content that they’re accessing, how it’s being used, whether they’re maybe spending money that’s not theirs,’ he said.
While there are technical restrictions that can be applied to limit access to certain content, Mr Arneill said it is ‘really important to underline that they’re not sufficient’.
He said: ‘If you only rely on those, I think you’ll come unstuck, because they’re not foolproof.
‘The internet is constantly evolving. Kids are clever and if they want to get on certain things, if they want to bypass certain things, they’ll be able to.
‘We know that 84% of the kids that we surveyed last year in the eight- to 12year-old age group have social media accounts already, even though the legal age is 13.
‘So kids are online and they’re doing what they want to be doing, whether there are restrictions in place or not.’
When children are on social media or other online chat platforms, parents should treat it like the real world and make sure they know who they are talking to.
‘If you saw your child talking to someone in a park, you wouldn’t dream
of not asking them who they were talking to,’ Mr Arneill said, adding that parents should check their children’s
list of online friends or followers regularly.
‘We find that a lot of kids will accept followers that they don’t know in the offline world.
‘One of the reasons that they give regularly [in CyberSafeKids’ surveys] is that it was a friend of a friend. That may work in theory,
but if that [real] friend is not so diligent about accepting followers, it could simply be that they’ve accepted anybody that follows them, and then that person is following you.’
Mr Arneill said that grooming ‘can happen anywhere online, really’.
He said: ‘Certain apps that might
possibly enable anonymity might be used, but it’s really any way that you can make contact.
‘So if you’re playing on a game and there’s a chat room, for example, that can be a way to build a rapport with the child and then that chat may be moved on to a different app that’s less public or more
secure. That could proceed into a grooming situation.’
Much child sexual abuse material is now generated by a child willingly sending images or videos over the internet, Mr Arneill cautioned.
‘Quite often the goal is not necessarily to meet up with the child or young person in the offline world.
It’s simply to establish that relationship, to establish that contact and then when the timing is right, they’ll start looking for photographs and for videos.
‘And obviously with smartphones and tablets, we know how easy it is to send images and videos. They’re very easy to send and they’re almost impossible to retrieve, once they’re sent,’ he added.
Mr Arneill said the charity is not about ‘scaremongering’ and acknowledges there are plenty of positive aspects of being online.
‘But I think if you’re going to give your child a device, you’ve got to be cognisant of the possible risks in the same way that you wouldn’t give them a car without making sure they had insurance, they knew how to drive, they knew how to follow the law.
‘It’s exactly the same with devices really. You’re giving children access to this infinite world of content and people that are out there and you’ve got to make sure they understand the possible risks that exist.’
CyberSafeKids recommends parents visit CommonSenseMedia.org to check if titles, including books, are appropriate for kids, while pegi.info (Pan European Game Information) deals with games.