I originally researched and wrote this article on the dangers of videogames and online gaming / social media for my child's school to distribute. I was concerned about some of the language and behaviour I was seeing as a result of gaming (online and offline), and social media use at such young ages. I've never allowed my son to use social media, and from the moment I became aware of the bullying and abuse that was happening he has been banned from online play indefinitely.
Unfortunately, the school wouldn't distribute this document as it had come from a third party, and out of respect for what they were doing internally I didn't publish it anywhere. They've now sent out a letter to all KS2 classes that echoes some of this after a survey of the kids in school, and a visit from a member of the Metropolitan Police, so that's progress (and I'll share the content of that in another post) but for now I'm posting this so that others can be informed with some information they may not have already.
I should add, too, that anyone who knows me relatively well will know that I'm tech-savvy, so I had locked down as much as the controls would allow. There are some not-so-obvious ways people can get around the limitations of those controls though, resulting in ephemeral channels being made available to kids to abuse each other, or for adults to abuse kids, or vice-versa. I cannot overemphasise how much of a problem this is, so if you have even the slightest concern about what your kids are doing online (or offline) you should look into it.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3crT89BHvGiT2dqTm42SUIzeX
Unfortunately, the school wouldn't distribute this document as it had come from a third party, and out of respect for what they were doing internally I didn't publish it anywhere. They've now sent out a letter to all KS2 classes that echoes some of this after a survey of the kids in school, and a visit from a member of the Metropolitan Police, so that's progress (and I'll share the content of that in another post) but for now I'm posting this so that others can be informed with some information they may not have already.
I should add, too, that anyone who knows me relatively well will know that I'm tech-savvy, so I had locked down as much as the controls would allow. There are some not-so-obvious ways people can get around the limitations of those controls though, resulting in ephemeral channels being made available to kids to abuse each other, or for adults to abuse kids, or vice-versa. I cannot overemphasise how much of a problem this is, so if you have even the slightest concern about what your kids are doing online (or offline) you should look into it.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3crT89BHvGiT2dqTm42SUIzeX
