Internet safety: Teaching children to keep themselves safe

This year's international Safer Internet Day (UK Safer Internet Centre, 2020), which is taking place on the 9th of February, comes almost 12 months after the start of the biggest educational experiment the world has ever seen. And, as millions of children the world over continue to learn using remote learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it could not be more timely.

The global theme of the event is ‘together for a better internet’ with a focus in the UK on how young people can tell fact from fiction and create an internet in which everyone can trust.

It comes weeks after the UK Government unveiled the outcome of its Online Harms White Paper consultation (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Home Office, 2020) into a ‘new age of accountability’ for social media (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport et al, 2020) which will see the passing of new laws to protect internet users.