Keeping your children safe online during the school holidays

Subject: Keeping your children safe online during the school holidays 

This summer, Counter Terrorism Policing West Midlands are urging parents to help keep their children safe online.

With the school holidays underway, young people will be spending more time online and we’re reminding parents and guardians to ensure they know how to manage their children’s online safety, and remind them of some of the things they can do to support their children to be safer in online spaces.

This follows messages delivered by Counter Terrorism Policing and the National Crime Agency, who are increasingly seeing children being routinely exposed to the most serious harmful online content. This includes sexual violence; self-harm and suicide content; extreme gore; animal cruelty; indecent images of children; and terrorist content.

During the summer holidays, young people will increasingly be spending more time in online spaces including gaming platforms, messaging apps and other online forums. Unfortunately, we know that these can be spaces where online offenders can exploit the school holidays to engage in criminal acts with young people when they know less support is available.

We’re sharing some practical advice to help parents feel empowered to support their children to be safer online.

Having conversations with young people about who they talk to online and the platforms they use can help parents to understand the online lives of their children and type of content they are consuming. Parents and guardians can then support them with identifying harmful content and knowing what to do if they come across something that concerns them. Concerning content can be reported to us by calling 101 or anonymously at gov.uk/ACT. 

Physical measures such as using parental controls on apps, routers and individual devices can also help, but it’s essential that these take place alongside regular conversations to help children and young people make the right decisions when online.

With the school holidays underway, it’s important to start the conversation about online safety as soon as possible.

If you’re concerned that someone might be taking a dangerous path, get advice and support via ACT Early.