Guide launched to keep children safe online this summer

A new ‘how to’ guide created for parents and carers to keep children safe online during the upcoming summer holidays has been launched by the CyberScotland Partnership today. ‘Staying Safe Online’ has been designed to provide those with caring responsibilities with credible and up-to-date information on ways to keep children protected from online harms.

The resource has been written by a team of ethical hackers, from one of the CyberScotland Partnership’s partners, Scottish Business Resilience Centre, in response to increased numbers of children gaming and socialising online over the summer. The guide covers advice on what parents and carers need to be aware of should their children play online games including Minecraft and Fortnite or use other popular social media platforms such as Twitch, Snapchat and TikTok.

The guide also details how parents can switch on profanity filters, restrict access to sexuality explicit language and block age restricted content.

In June 2020, Ofcom reported that because of the restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of children aged 8-15 were uploading videos to Snapchat (48%) and TikTok (50%) each week. With national restrictions in Scotland remaining more than one year on, many families face the same prospect of increased online activity during the forthcoming summer holidays.

Jude McCorry, Chair of the CyberScotland Partnership said: “This week children are finishing up for summer and are about embark on six weeks of holidays. With some restrictions still in place for travel and not all activity centres open, the prospect is that children will be spending much of that time online.”

“While the online world provides great opportunities for learning and collaboration, sadly, there is also a much darker side to the internet and it’s important parents and carers know how to ensure their children’s safety online this summer. We created this guide to give parents the confidence to have conversations with their children around the need to be cautious about who they share information with online this summer, but also to give them the practical skills to update the right parental controls.”