Dear Editor:
As the long school summer holidays continue, I’d like to remind parents about online safety and the importance of protecting children who may be spending more time on the internet while there is no school.
New research from the NSPCC has revealed the extent of grooming and inappropriate behaviour on the most popular social networking sites.
It shows that more than 200,000 secondary school pupils across the UK may have been groomed by an adult on a social network.
Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Instagram and WhatsApp were the platforms where young people using them most commonly reported grooming activity had taken place.
Among the 11 to 17 year olds interviewed, one in 25 had sent, received or been asked to send sexual content to an adult.
Across the different platforms, the NSPCC found that one child in 25 using Snapchat had sent, received or been asked to send sexual content to or from an adult, the same figure for Facebook or Facebook Messenger and one in 33 using Twitch and Twitter.
The scale of risk that children face on social networks revealed in this research cannot be ignored and tackling it with robust and comprehensive legislation needs to be a priority.
Tech firms need to be forced to get a grip of the abuse taking place on their sites by using technology to identify suspicious behaviour and designing young people’s accounts with built-in protections.
We want the UK Government to stick to its commitment to introduce an Online Harms Bill by early next year, which will force tech firms to exercise a duty of care and protect children from abuse on their platforms.
But in the meantime the best thing parents can do is to have regular conversations with their children about their online lives, as they would about their day at school.
For practical tips on online safety, including how to set up privacy settings on different social networks, parents can visit the NSPCC O2 www.net-aware.org.uk site. Children can speak to a trusted adult or to Childline on 0800 11 11.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Anderson,
Head of NSPCC Northern Ireland
First Floor, Lanyon Building
Jennymount Business Park
North Derby Street
Belfast
BT15 3HN