Is family learning the key to e-safety?
Like many of the readers of this blog, I’m a parent and, like most parents, I worry about the future of my child. As someone who has worked around social media and e-safety for some years, one of my biggest concerns is preparing my daughter for a world where her life is online, not just in terms of the content she uploads, but also the content she will, like it or not, come into contact with. She’s not yet started school but, even now, I can see the way media, advertisements and peer pressures have influenced her choices, tastes and attitudes – and I’m reliably informed there is far worse to come!
It’s little wonder, then, that we’ve seen calls to action from across the political divides. Diane Abbot MP recently spoke about the phenomenon of ‘sexting’ – the practice of sending explicit content between devices – and called for better sex education to prepare young people for such events. Most recently, Claire Perry MP – the Prime Minster’s new advisor on childhood – called for more parent involvement in challenging what their children do online, telling the Daily Mail that society was “complicit” in assuming children had a right to keep their online content from their parents, which she labelled “bizarre”. As well as calling on parents to “sit down with their kids” and explain online dangers, she too called for a shake-up of the school curriculum.
The problem with sitting down with your kids, however, is one of digital literacy. Many parents, not users of Facebook or smartphones themselves, would struggle to know what to advise, let alone what to look for. What’s been missed, amid the calls for curriculum shake ups and regulatory reform, is the process of empowering parents to make decisions on this subject. This is where family learning comes into play.
Kent County Council has been examining different approaches to this. Initial attempts to run courses specifically aimed at parents failed to gain much ground, however, when the learning became intergenerational the whole situation changed. In one primary school, children were taught about e-safety by the council’s e-safety officer while parents observed and, later, explored safety websites with their children. This was followed by a question and answer session for parents, with take up massively higher than the parents only evening. Kent’s Children Centres also got in on the act, adding e-safety advice sessions to their parents’ groups and, following the success of that, adding a complete e-safety session to their ‘Bumps and Bruises’ parenting safety course. The feedback from parents was, the council says, tremendous, and e-safety is clearly now embedded within the courses offered to parents.
My daughter is growing up in a world where online life will be everyday life and she’ll no doubt reap the benefits and face the dangers this brings. It’s certainly going to be different from the childhood I experienced, but that need not be a bad thing. Online life is a learning journey for the young and the old alike – so it makes sense it is one we start taking together.
You make some good points. I’m pleased that MPs are taking an interest in this issue- my colleagues and I in the health education sector have been championing better Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) for years. I think we all need to be flexible in the way we approach e safety. Schools need to look at how and what their students are accessing online and their attitudes to e safety and then develop learning around the needs of their students. Almost all schools run e safety learning sessions for parents but they have very little take up. Learning alongside your child takes the fear out e safety and I love the idea of sandwiching it with another activity so parents are less anxious about it. I do think we need to be more circumspect about what children and young people get up to online and family learning- we all learn together- seems to be the way to go.