Online safety and technology - keeping our children safe

By Frank Butler, Managing Director, Bounga Informatics and BritCham ICT Committee member

Our ICT Committee is running a series of activities and events relating to online safety and security in the coming months. We kick things off with a piece to help parents and careers navigate cyberspace and the emerging metaverse (and we still don’t know what it is either!) Please contact our committee if you’ve got questions or items to share relating to this topic, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

Parents, carers and communities have developed great capabilities in helping children develop to stay safe in the physical world, from avoiding road hazards and stranger danger, to “safety proofing” houses. This well intended care is increasingly harder to apply when it comes to our online environment.

It’s perhaps natural that many of us haven’t developed the skills and knowledge about digital matters. The days of a household computer in the corner of the room with parental sentry duty are long gone. Children now have access to endless online creativity using the most technologically advanced gadgets, whether personal devices primarily used for education or phones and tablets used for meeting friends online.

Individual family members can end up inside an endless online world. Look around next time you are in a restaurant and you’ll see how pervasive this has become. As a parent, do you know exactly what your children are accessing?

Are they checking out the latest K-Pop, football scores, are they streaming YouTube influencers, or has there been compromising chat with someone from who knows where?

Don’t forget that the risk of exposure to strangers takes on a far more insidious form online. Kids may see a stranger on the street, where builtin awareness and parental education warns them to steer clear. But that online stranger may appear as a like-minded kid, with similar hobbies and dislikes, except there is a chance that they may be an adult predator.

You may recall The New Yorker cartoon from the early 1990s which shows a dog typing out a computer message, a cat being the recipient not knowing the sender, and the caption - “on the internet nobody knows you are a dog”.

Photo credit: Peter Steiner

The situation is exacerbated by peer pressure, with cases of children sending inappropriate media because others are doing it, or because they are being bullied into doing it.

So, what’s the answer? Education and the building of trust is a huge part of ithas a large part to play. Children notmay not be emotionally equipped to make some of the decisions they face every day, and parents should be there as their advisors and guides. It’s a great gesture to buy the latest phone or device and present it to them, but this must come with guidance and advice. In the end, establishing online boundaries, trust between the child and caregiver, and the security of a support system, will pay off.

Schools are playing an important role already, where appropriate learning is incorporated with the curriculum for children to be knowledgeable of good online behaviour and alert to the dangers. The Ministry of Education teaches Cyber Wellness from Primary School years onwards, as part of the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) lessons, with resources available for parents to help support the messaging .

“Of increasing importance within our digital curriculum is the ethical use of technology, accounting for the continued evolution of technology and its growing symbiotic role in society. We believe in not only increasing awareness of potential ethical issues but also promoting and embedding ethical approaches, behaviours and actions in order to use and interact through technology in a more safe and responsible manner.” Dan Franklin, Deputy Head Educational Technology, Dover Court International School.

Here are some tips to start your journey in online safety

For Children

• Agree on and follow the family rules, and those set by the Internet service provider.

• Never post or trade personal pictures.

• Never reveal personal information, such as address, phone number, or school name or location.

• Use only a screen name and don't share passwords (other than with parents).

• Never agree to get together in person with anyone met online without parent approval and/or supervision.

• Never respond to a threatening email, message, post, or text.

• Always tell a parent or other trusted adult about any communication or conversation that was scary or hurtful.

For parents:

• Spend time online together to teach your kids appropriate online behaviour.

• For younger users, consider using parental mobile tools offered by Apple (Screen Time) and Google (FamilyLink), depending on the operating system of the device, to block access to any apps, limit time used per day, etc

• Keep computers in a common area where you can watch and monitor use, not in individual bedrooms.

• Bookmark kids' favourite sites for easy access.

• Check your credit card and phone bills for unfamiliar account charges or connect the App Store/Google Play Store on their device to your account so that you can limit permissions to download apps/purchase inapp items.

• Find out what online protection is offered by your child's school, after-school centre, friends' homes, or any place where children access a computer without your supervision.

• Take your child seriously if he or she reports an uncomfortable online exchange

Online Resources

• Cyber Security Agency (Singapore) download materials for different age groups

• Help123 – resources on cyber bullying, screen time, gaming, social media, online content, and online privacy

• Get Safe Online - Unbiased, factual and easyto-understand online safety info from the UK

• Click Action for Children - focused on assisting foster carers and care-experienced teens

• IWF – a UK Charity with a mission to stop child sexual abuse online

• SafetyTech Innovation Network - for businesses interested in wider online safety and Safety Tech opportunities and solutions

• UK market analysis of the SafetyTech sector