Dear sir,
Last week I attended a Cheshire Constabulary Online Safety education session designed specifically for Primary School parents. After attending, I felt completely shaken. I’d had a mild awareness of some online dangers, but was naive in not realising how significant the danger really is. I found the session massively eye opening and beneficial.
This is why I am writing this letter. To thank Mossley Primary School and Cheshire Constabulary for the education course, and to help others parents in Congleton that like me, are mostly unaware of the enormous dangers that lurk online for our children. I grew up in the age before the internet became accessible in the palm of your hand, something I now feel hugely fortunate about.
The police officer who ran the session was superb, I must commend him on this. A whole host of different, commonly used apps were shown to have inappropriate content, for example, severe violence, bullying etc. This is entirely unregulated for children.
The session also included details about how gaming materials and chats may also be a threat. Children can be exposed to risks such as in-game bullying, extreme violence, online grooming or in some extreme cases gaming addiction.
There are many details around online safety found on the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) website. I would urge parents to refer to this to learn more. Unfortunately, the detail of their report is too shocking to detail in this letter, I do not wish to upset/trigger anyone.
The protection of our children is too important to leave to the goodwill of large, profit-orientated organisations. Statutory regulation is needed and as a matter of urgency.
The session then gave practical and helpful advice on how to best to tackle this at home, here are just a few that could be used if you wish to do so, for example,
1. Keeping phone charging points downstairs and know the PIN number.
2. All social media accounts should be set to private.
3. Encourage children to use an avatar instead of their own face, as the real face identifies them as a child.
4. Amazon has an option so that any photos your child takes are automatically uploaded to the parent’s Amazon account, so that you can view them.
5. Make phones less interesting by limiting the number of apps on the phone.
An example of a mobile phone with no internet access, are an available option.Parents can only ever try their best, but awareness is definitely essential. If you ever get the opportunity to attend a session such as this, I’d definitely recommen