How to keep our children safe online?

Hatherop Castle is educating and empowering children with the knowledge to identify online risks and how to avoid or deal with certain situations. Last week, Prep 5 to 8 enjoyed an entertaining but informative talk by Rich Cotterill a singer/songwriter who speaks on topics such as e safety to children around the country. As well as entertaining the children by playing one or two popular songs and getting the children to join in, Rich had an important message to deliver about the do’s and don’ts of social media sites such as Instagram, snap chat and Whats App.

His message was very simple. We all have control of our privacy and to protect this our social media accounts settings must be set to private. Secondly and probably most importantly he explained to the children that whatever is written or sent (photos, images) becomes the property of those who have sent it to and therefore you lose control of that information. Even if you delete your post, others will have it and can share or print it. The advice he gave was to give yourself 10 seconds between writing and sending; this allows the sender time to think carefully about what they are posting.