Water Primary School will try and keep you informed with all the latest developments and updates regarding being safe online at home.

Snapchat latest updates enables users to see exactly where their friends are, so detailed that if you zoom in you can even see the street location. 

This obviously raises safety concerns for children who use the app.

Many children tend to import all their random contacts when they set up their Snapchat so unless they or you check their settings it is possible that all these random strangers will now see an accurate location.

As a matter of urgency we would ask all children and parents to check that Snapchat is changed to ‘Ghost mode’ so that location isn’t shared with friends.

Useful Links:

http://www.childnet.com/blog/introducing-snap-maps-the-new-location-sharing-feature-in-snapchat

http://www.childnet.com/blog/reporting-within-snapchat-stories

https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/advice-centre/social-media-help/snapchat

You Tube

Parent advice: Your child’s age will determine how to proceed. YouTube is supposed to be for users over the age of 13, due to the fact that the parent company, Google, collects and markets user data. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) exempts children from data collection.

But, as we all know, plenty of kids have YouTube channels – below are a couple of sites that will support you to set up a child friendly YouTube channel.

Have you asked your child ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ don’t be surprised if they reply – 

http://swgfl.org.uk/magazine/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-youtuber/

How to set up a child friendly YouTube channel and is it ok?

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/learning-with-technology/is-it-ok-for-my-kid-to-start-her-own-youtube-channel

How to set Parent Controls

Parental controls are designed to help protect children from inappropriate content they may come across online, such as pornography. These controls can be used to limit access to only age-appropriate content, to set usage times and to monitor activity.

Click on the links below to see information on how to set up parental controls.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/articles/Parental-controls/

https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/