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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Useful resources for Parents and Carers

17 June 2015

Some parents turn to socialmedia to punish and discipline their children by publicly shaming them.

The implications and consequences of this public shaming and humilation are serious and at times fatal.

Public humiliation videos will cause problems for young people when they apply for college and employment. It seems that parents do not realise the message; 'Post once and it's there forever' applies to their social media activity too.

It should also be noted that there have been tragic incidents where young people have taken their own lives following public shaming by their parents.

In the US there is a proposal to make parental public shaming of their children a state offence.

15 June 2015

'Nude Selfies: What Parents and Carers Need to Know' is a series of four short animated films for parents and carers offering advice on how to help keep their children safe from the risks associated with sharing nude and nearly nude images.

The films aim to help parents and carers:

  • Understand young people's motivations for sending nude selfies.
  • Plan to respond positively and constructively to an incident in which their child has shared a nude selfie.
  • Gain confidence and skills in initiating preventative conversations.
  • Identify risky behaviours or situations and know where to seek help.
  • Know how to get help if a child is at risk after sharing an image.

 

04 June 2015

Extremism is not a new topic in education, but recent events and legislation require schools to be fully apprised with this area. London Grid for Learning have created this resource in partnership with Sara Khan from counter-extremism and women's rights organisation Inspire. She highlights the fact that mainstream Islam and ISIS are worlds apart, and lays out principles that apply equally to all forms of extremism, including the far-right. This resource should not only build professionals' confidence in safeguarding young people, but also help in challenging anti-Muslim sentiment and promote shared values and community cohesion.

 

The resource

26 May 2015

How does Facebook know who your friends are? It's a mystery that has nagged users since at least 2011, when the Irish Data Protection Commissioner conducted a full-scale investigation into the issue. But four years later, there's still a lot of confusion and misinformation about what Facebook's doing when it "finds" your friends.

Did it scrape your phone for names and numbers? Run a reverse-image search of your picture? Compile a "shadow" or "ghost" profile on you over a period of years, just waiting for you to log on and "confirm" its guesses?

Alas, Facebook's actual process isn't actually that sneaky or malicious. In fact, it involves this pretty complex academic field called ... network science.

Read more

21 May 2015

The UK Safer Internet Centre have now produced and published three brand new checklists – for Twitter, Snapchat & Instagram, with the same style and format as their hugely popular Facebook checklist. (via Kent esafety)

Read more at Kent Esafety.