Online Safety

Online safety is an umbrella term for promoting the safeguarding of children and young people when having any interaction over the internet. The online world can add great value to the personal lives and education of children and young people, but it also presents risks and threats. Technology is always evolving, and with developments in virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI), there are major shifts in how we all interact with the world.

Many adults believe that young people know more about technology than them, but there’s more to technology than the technology itself. The internet, now more than ever, is about relationships, choices and respect. Its proper usage requires wisdom, positive personal values, emotional intelligence and self-reflection. This is where all settings working with children and young people, regardless of age, can take a lead.

In 2025 Ofcom published its latest Children and parents: media use and attitudes report. Findings from children and parents included:

• Parents and children identified positive benefits of being online, particularly in relation to learning (81% children, 84% parents) and to building and maintaining friendships (68% children, 65% parents). 
• Viewing videos on online video-sharing platforms such as YouTube or TikTok remained a wide-spread activity (96%).
• About nine in ten children (89%) played video games, with children aged 8-17 saying they used games as a way of playing with (55%) and chatting with (47%) people they knew. Of those children surveyed, 25% played with, and 22% talked to people they didn’t know outside the game.
• Nearly three in ten children aged 8 to 17 (29%) had experienced someone being nasty or hurtful to them via apps or platforms; this was more than those who reported having had someone be nasty and hurtful to them face to face (20%).

It is not only computers, phones and laptops that are internet enabled – other devices such as smart speakers, wearables (e.g., smart watches), toys with voice or image recognition, robots, drones and other mechanical toys, smart TVs, games consoles, are as well. Children can use them access to chat rooms, unsafe content and other sites where there may be risks. Many of these platforms, and the communications within them, are unseen by adults who may not be made aware of what is happening online until they receive a report of harm. It is therefore important that early years settings, as well as schools and colleges, model and educate about safer use of the internet, embedding good understanding and safer practice from the start.

Online abuse and or cybercrime can involve children being at risk from people they know (including other children), or from strangers. Online abuse and or cybercrime might be part of other abuse and crime that is happening offline or might only happen online.

Categories of harm could be described as:

• Content: exposure to illegal, inappropriate or harmful materials, e.g., pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, eating disorders, suicide, radicalisation and extremism. Even pre-school children may come across such content – especially on devices with voice-activated search enabled.
• Contact: being subjected to harmful online interactions with other users, e.g., peer pressure; bullying; adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes; sexual abuse, for example, non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at (or in the production of) sexual images, watching sexual activities and encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways. Contact harm might also include stalking (in person or via spyware), identity theft and harassment (in person or via message/online contact). Financially Motivated Sexual Extortion and or blackmail are also harms which might occur.
• Conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of/causes harm, e.g., making (including AI-generated), sending and receiving consensual and non-consensual nudes and semi-nudes and/or pornography; sending sexually explicit messages; bullying; allowing apps/websites to access location; accidentally sending inappropriate and/or indecent images and information to a device’s contact list;  obsessive use of the internet and ICT, for example, addiction to video games, social media self-image and number of likes; exposure to/creation of hate mail or offensive images, game hacking, device crashing, stalking, harassment, videoing/livestreaming assaults.
• Commerce: finance-based risks (both as victims and perpetratorsinstigators), e.g., online gambling; in-game spending; inappropriate advertising; phishing and/or financial exploitation e.g., being persuaded or tricked into ‘money muling’ or ‘squaring’ (moving someone else’s money through your bank account for a commission); copyright infringement, for example, the illegal sharing of music, pictures, videos or documents. 

Identifying, responding to and preventing these types of harm falls well within the remit of professional safeguarding responsibilities, as outlined in guidance such as Keeping Children Safe in Education and Working Together to Safeguard Children.

A good starting point to online safety practice in any setting is making sure that children cannot be harmed via online means whilst they are accessing the setting.

• Ensure all staff are trained in online safety and receive regular updates at least annually. This should include an understanding of the expectations, applicable roles and responsibilities in relation to filtering and monitoring, keep staff up to date with what children/young people are doing online, and ensure they understand expectations regarding online professional boundaries and behaviour, including communication via social media.
• Technology is constantly evolving, as are the risks and harms associated with it. Check the tech your setting uses (including EdTech systems) and how safe it is/safely it is being used. Consider an annual review of your organisations approach to online safety, supported by an annual risk assessment that considers and reflects the ever-changing risks children face. A free online safety self-review tool for education settings can be found via the 360 safe website.
• Ensure your child protection policy includes online safety relevant to your setting and the devices you use, references filtering and monitoring standards appropriate to the needs of your setting and that all staff understand their roles in meeting these standards.
• Ensure filtering and monitoring systems are actively used to safeguard students, managed well and reviewed on a regular basis.
  
  In education settings, ensure online safety is an integral part of the curriculum (from early years upwards) and children and young people know how to evaluate what they see online, recognise persuasion techniques and understand what safer online behaviour is.
  
  Ensure staff know not to ‘spread the word’ about named ‘bad/scary/dangerous’ sites/challenges so as not to publicise them, spread panic and/or generate a false sense of security (abuse/harm can happen on ‘good’ sites).
• Always consider any students who are completing remote learning at home via the internet, are they being sufficiently protected in relation to online harms during their studies?