Mr Roberts, thank you for raising again the issue of e-safety in last week’s Newsweb. I can fully understand the difficulties it raises for you as a school in being expected to police e-safety in something that is happening out of school, but the impact of these issues has a knock-on effect in school. I just wanted to share with you my family approach to e-safety. 

My husband and I are both fortunate to work in fields where children’s e-safety is a big part of our work, so we have both received a fair bit of professional training in this area. The overwhelming message for us is that talking about e-safety with your children and knowing what they are doing online is absolutely key. If children come across something online or in their social media that makes them uncomfortable or worried, they need to be confident that they can come to their parents for help without any fear of being punished for reporting their concerns. The idea of banning them from devices because they have come across something unsuitable will just lead them to using the devices behind our backs. That being said, we also believe in boundaries around devices, e.g. not having them in bedrooms overnight; video calls being in an open space where adults can be seen in the background. We also have parental controls set up on all their devices so we can limit screen time and any new websites or apps require parental approval before they can be accessed.

As a family we have taken the approach of introducing our children slowly to technology and guiding them through it in the hope that by the time they are old enough to have their own device to use independently, they will have enough experience on how to use it safely, but at the same time we will be checking how they are using it and insisting on sensible boundaries.

I like to think of it in a similar way to how you would approach road safety.

Road safety 

Get them out of the pram and begin small walks holding hands/on reins.

Allow them to go on ahead to short agreed points, e.g. the next lamp post.

Begin to discuss safety at road crossings. Ask children to say if they think it is safe to cross.

When children are crossing safely, allow crossing of quiet roads alone.

Allowing walking of partial distance to/from school alone.

Allowing walking full distance and having phone for safety reasons.

e-safety

Use a device to take some photos of what you’ve been doing. Show how to share them with grandparents (email or similar).

Allow them to independently share photos with grandparents and use the device to message grandparents. 

Begin to introduce other apps and how to use them effectively and safely (e.g. set up a Spotify playlist for a family road trip, ensure whole families preferences are considered - parental controls allow to block explicit content. Use a weather app to check the weather for a family day out. Use the calculator to help with a maths problem.). The main aim being to introduce useful purposes of their devices.

Begin to use devices to communicate with trusted family (e.g. grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles) to get an understanding of how messaging works. Maybe a group message between child and both parents so they can start to understand the difference between group chats and 1-1 chats.

Begin to allow communication with a wider group of trusted people, e.g. cousins, older family friends.

Allowing phone for walk to and from school but it’s not to be glued to them so they don’t even look up to cross the roads. Only reason to have it is to communicate between child and parent any changes in going home arrangements (e.g. they’ve been offered a lift with a friend).

Unfortunately it’s at this point where they all get phones so we find ourselves in the depths of multiple friend chats. Keep on top of what they’re doing and restrict times to sensible hours.

I grew up in a world where I got my first phone at 17 because I’d passed my driving test. It made phone calls and sent messages but only in capital letters! We’re bringing up our children in a totally different world to which most of us grew up in. I’m not saying for sure that my way is the right way, we all have our different views. As a family we’re very much at the early stage of our independent use of devices stage for our children, but it all happens scarily quickly. I very much hope that by keeping communication channels open and boundaries sensible that we will have struck the right balance and that when any future issues arise we will be well equipped to deal with them.

Parenting is not easy and ultimately you know your child best. What is right for one child at a particular age is not right for all.

It’s a very challenging world we’re dealing with but my final thought would be:

If you’d never trained a child in how to cross roads safely, without years of support and guidance, would you send them to school on their own aged 10?

If you’d never given your child years of support and guidance on how to use a mobile phone safely, would you send them to school with one aged 10?

What do you think?