With more and more children online than ever, and the rise in popularity and diversity of social media channels, keeping kids safe online can be a real worry for parents. National Online Safety is here to help, it is their mission to make the internet a safer place for children. To do this, they work with school staff, parents and children to give them the knowledge they need to understand online dangers and how best to react should an incident arise.
National Online Safety have produced excellent one-pagers for parents, covering off everything you need to know about popular social media sites and games consoles. We’ve pulled them together in one place (in alphabetical order) and hope you find them useful. Check out www.nationalonlinesafety.com for more information.
Houseparty
In the current environment, many of us are using different ways to try and keep in touch with our friends and family. One app that has risen in popularity is Houseparty, which gained the no.1 spot on the app store after becoming one of the most downloaded apps since social isolation was introduced. Billed as a ‘face to face social network’ the platform launched in 2016 but isn’t as widely known as Facebook, WhatsApp or Snapchat.
Instagram is a hugely popular networking site with over 1bn users worldwide. The app allows users to upload images and videos to their feed, create interactive ‘stories’, exchange private messages or search, explore and follow other accounts that they like. In a report by the RSPH, Instagram was ranked the worst for young people’s mental health.
PS4
Since arriving on the market in 1994, PlayStation has become one of the most recognised names in the gaming industry. Its current model, the PlayStation 4, is an all-in-one entertainment hub, offering much more than just the ability to game with internet access, streaming services and online chat features.
TikTok
TikTok is a video-sharing social media app which lets users create, share, and view bite-size user created videos. It has been designed with the young user in mind and has a very addictive appeal. At the beginning of 2019 it skyrocketed in popularity to become the iOS store’s most downloaded app with over 33 million downloads. Estimates suggest that it now has anything between 500 million and over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.
Triller
The latest video sharing app on the market, which encourages users to create music videos and share them with the world. The platform boasts some of the music industry’s biggest stars as users and recently announced that it had amassed over 250 million downloads worldwide.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a popular social media platform and microblogging site with over 463 million blogs on its platform. In Europe you must be over 16 to sign up, but the age limit is just 13 elsewhere. However, in both cases, age verification is limited. The platform is designed to share different types of content, such as videos, photos or short articles. People can react to each other’s content, share items they like, and even interact through the platform with direct messages.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with more than 1.5 billion people in more than 180 countries using it to send and receive text, photos, videos and documents, as well as make voice and video calls through an Internet or Wi-Fi connection.
Xbox One
The Xbox One is among the most popular video games consoles on the planet. With the units sold exceeding 50 million, there’s a whole network of gamers enjoying online experiences together through the console’s Xbox Live service.
YouTube
YouTube is an online platform (owned by Google) where anyone can upload & watch video content. All different types of information, advice & entertainment are uploaded & billions of people tune in to watch, rate & comment on it.
YouTube Kids
Although children of all ages often watch YouTube content directly via the website or main YouTube app, YouTube itself states that the only place children should be watching its videos is in the YouTube Kids app.
The copy and parent guides included in this blog are solely from nationalonlinesafety.com and not written by guernseywithkids.com. We hope bringing the information together will help increase the reach of the work done by nationalonlinesafety.com
