Today, the 7th February 2017, was World Internet Safety Day. It is all about raising awareness of internet safety and making sure that young people are well educated about online behaviour and that parents and carers are well trained in the possible dangers of the internet and how best to deal with them. As an aspiring teacher I found it extremely useful to learn about and gain access to resources which I will be able to reference as support when I am faced with teaching pupils about internet safety. Today my tutor told us something which made a large impact on me. He told us that we must treat going on the internet like going outside. Although it is indoors and may appear as though it is constricted to one safe room, it is the complete opposite! I would even go as far as to argue that the internet can be an even more dangerous place than the outdoors as it can expose any person to any number of dangerous people and environments; often many more dangerous people than the number who physically live near them.

Stranger danger is discussed with young children before they are able to understand what it means. The internet, I feel, is a particularly scary place because for some reason, most of us are happy to accept someone as our ‘friend’ or to allow someone to ‘follow’ us, who in fact is not our friend at all! People need to understand the dangers of posting personal information online as this can often be viewed by anyone who wants to see it and can track them to know more about you than you would want a stranger to know! People online can hide behind the mask of a profile, which may or may not hold true information about them. They are free to make up any character they wish, making it easy for them to manipulate people into believing their lies. I felt that I was exposed to the dangers of this, especially the very real dangers of grooming throughout my time spent in late primary school and secondary school. However, it is clear that as technology is ever advancing, social media is becoming more and more popular with children who are way below the recommended age of use. Social media is not confined to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Apps such as Snapchat and games which allow people to play live against each other while talking through headphones or online messages also fall in to this category. This means that just as children are introduced to stranger danger, they must be introduced to internet safety.

Stepping away from the idea of false profiles, I feel that there is a sense of competition between young people to have the most ‘friends’ or ‘followers’, meaning that hopefully they will get the most ‘likes’ on their posts and pictures, which is thought of my many as a measure of popularity and beauty. This can give people a sense of confidence but it also provides a whole new platform for bullying and insecurities. We are constantly faced with edited photos of unrealistic looking people and an obsession with the ‘selfie’. This is an unnecessary pressure that seems to be effecting more and more younger children. Social media is something which should be enjoyed, not abused. It is therefore imperative that we teach our future generations about how to behave online and how to deal with anything which seems even slightly strange or anything which has upset them.

We were provided today with a link to CEOP ThinkUKnow materials which had many videos helpful tips about how to teach internet safety to different age groups and how to deal with reports of anything suspicious or unsettling happening online. I found this to be very helpful as I know that this is a resource which I will need to become very familiar with over the years! We were also provided with links to lesson plans for different age groups of children to use on World Internet Safety Day. These gave us materials to use and instructions of how best to use them along with powerpoint presentations and ideas of questions and prompts to use to guide discussions within the classroom. I have saved these resources onto my computer as I feel that they will definitely come in handy one day. Although we are becoming more and more aware of online dangers and working to improve how we deal with them, I believe that due to the long period of time in which social media did not exist, there are still many people who do not see the true extent of the dangers of the internet and this is something that we, as educators, must do our very best to deal with.

By helping people to stay safe online, we are helping people to stay safe in the world. What could possibly be negative about that?