Safer Internet Day 2010

Today is Safer Internet Day 2010. Organised each year by Insafe, and coordinated in the UK by CEOP, Safer Internet Day aims to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. In 2009, Safer Internet Day was celebrated through 500 events in 50 countries all over the world.

This year's theme is 'Think B4 U post!', with the message that anything anyone posts online remains there for an indefinite period and accessible for everyone. This can have serious consequences: children and teenagers need to be made aware that they can control their online identity.

Through the activities organised in the various countries, parents are being asked:

Do you know if your kids:

 - use the privacy settings offered by social networking services?
 - select friends online that they can trust?
 - publish their own photos after thinking carefully about the potential consequences?
 - publish pictures of their friends only with their permission?

Here's the TV spot made to publicise this year's campaign:



With Facebook's recent default change (making everything you post publically viewable unless you go into your privacy settings and change them) this message is more important than ever.  And it's not just for kids.
Adults need to learn that what they do online may impact their lives, and the lives of others, forever.  (Just ask the Vodaphone employee who thought it would be funny to send out an offensive tweet on his company's Twitter account last week).

CEOP are tackling the job of trying to reach the children and their parents with this message with a mass of resources (assemblies, activities, videos) on their portal .  If you live in the UK and want to get involved, click here to see a list of Safer Internet day activities in your area.  Another great organisation with some good resources is Beatbullying - check out their lessons plans.

It's great to see so many of the schools' activities being aimed at the parents and carers: it's hard being the passport-holder of a digital native.  We can't expect them to be able to monitor their children's activities if they haven't been given the tools and training to do so.

If you're reading this, and especially if you're a parent, please take a moment to think how you may be able to help spread the word.  Give a talk at your local school?  Arrange some training for a group of local parents?  Forward the resources to your local school? Just pass on the message to friends?  Whatever it is, we can probably all do something to make our children aware of the consequences of posting, whether to themselves or others.