Please find the National Online Safety guide for What Parents and Carers Need to Know about Influencers below.

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The concept of influencers is hardly a new one. Through newspaper columns and TV spots, we’ve long been accustomed to hearing informed opinion from, say, Martin Lewis on money, Nigella Lawson on food or Mark Kermode on cinema. How the digital revolution has changed the game, however, is by providing a plethora of platforms from which literally anyone can have their say.

Online, you’ll find hordes of people holding forth on any number of topics: gaming, beauty, travel, fashion, fitness … virtually anything you can think of. What qualifies them as ‘experts’, however? Is it safe for young people to consume the oceans of content that they generate? Our #WakeUpWednesday guide brings you the essential info on the influencer phenomenon.

Please find the National Online Safety guide for Looking After Your Wellbeing Online below.

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The online world and digital technology has become such a significant part of our lives – and integral to so many aspects of our daily routine – that we shouldn’t be surprised at the degree of influence it can wield over what we think and how we feel. Many experiences that young people have on the internet are hugely positive and uplifting … but sadly, that’s not always the case.

Please find the National Online Safety guide for What Parents and Carers Need to Know about Telegram below.

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With more than 700 million users worldwide, Telegram is a popular alternative to the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger; indeed, in some countries, it’s overtaken that pair to become the most-used instant messaging app. Telegram’s no stranger to controversy, however, and has occasionally been made unavailable for download in some nations (including the UK).

There are various reasons for these suspensions, but the primary trigger for the authorities’ concern has been that Telegram’s robust encryption, sadly, all too often encourages the app’s use as a conduit for extremist political material and illegal sexual content. Our #WakeUpWednesday guide this week brings trusted adults the lowdown on Telegram.

In the guide you’ll find tips on a number of potential risks including a lack of age verification, inappropriate content and cyber-bullying.

Please find the National Online Safety guide for 10 Top Tips for Safely Using Smartwatches below.

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Wearable tech is increasingly big business. More than 170 million smartwatches were sold globally in 2022, for example, with Apple biting off the largest chunk of the market (26% – some distance ahead of Samsung, in second with 9%). That’s partly because they have more than 21,000 apps available for their devices, allowing users to customise their smartwatch experience.

Both Apple and Samsung’s products, of course, lean towards the higher spec end of the market – usually with price tags to match. Sourcing a less expensive alternative, however, often also means inferior safety features to protect young wearers. That’s just one of the potential hazards highlighted in our #WakeUpWednesday guide to smartwatches. In the guide you’ll find tips on a number of potential risks such as location tracking, causing distractions at school and the danger of theft.

Please find the National Online Safety guide for What Parents and Carers Need to Know about Wizz below.

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Recently rising in popularity among children and young people, Wizz is a social networking app that allows users to chat live with people from around the world. In similar fashion to a dating app, it facilitates conversations with people that users would not ordinary meet – but of course, making connections to individuals online bring its own self-evident potential safety issues.    

While Wizz makes use of face recognition technology to assesses users’ age and group them by age group – but the software is far from perfect and is no guarantee that some individuals won’t attempt to exploit the app for sinister purposes. Our #WakeUpWednesday guide examines Wizz in detail, identifying pitfalls that parents and carers should be aware of. 

In the guide you’ll find tips on a number of potential risks such as catfishing, explicit content and “sextortion”, and examines how trusted adults can take young people to avoid these possible threats. 

Please find the National Online Safety guide for What Parents and Carers Need to Know about Fortnite Chapter 4 below.

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If you know any young gamers, you’ll almost certainly be familiar with Fortnite. It’s one of the most popular video games on the planet – up alongside other mega-hits like Minecraft, Roblox and Call of Duty in terms of its sheer number of fiercely dedicated players. Fortnite currently has more than 400 million devotees worldwide – around 25 million of whom play it every day. 

Given Fortnite’s relatively young user-base, though (as many as one in four pre-teens are reported to have played the game, despite its PEGI 12 age rating), it’s prudent not to conflate immense popularity with absolute safety. Our #WakeUpWednesday guide assesses the latest version for potential pitfalls that parents and carers of young Fortnite fans should be aware of.

In the guide you’ll find a number of potential risks such as compulsive playing, audio chat with other gamers and in-game spending.

Please find the National Online Safety guide for Helping Children and Young People with Managing Device Stress and Anxiety below.

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We can access new music and movies in seconds. We can get products delivered to our door the very next day. We can chat or play games with people on the other side of the planet. For all of the remarkable benefits the digital age has brought us, however, it’s also presented us with a whole new raft of pressures and anxieties that, in truth, we’re all still learning to cope with.   

From continual notifications inflaming a fear of missing out to the risk of public embarrassment or slanging matches on social media, today’s children and young people have stresses to manage that previous generations simply never encountered. Our #WakeUpWednesday guide examines these uniquely modern worries, highlighting ways to reduce the anxiety that digital devices can bring.  

In the guide you’ll find tips on reducing push notifications from apps, avoiding social media arguments and spotting when a child’s been upset by something online. 

Please find the National Online Safety guide for What Parents & Carers Need to Know about Echo Chambers below.

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Have you ever read something online that’s changed your perspective? Provided new information and made you look at an issue in a fresh light? Imagine if that kind of thing never happened: if everything you read on the internet just reinforced what you thought to begin with, and – what’s more – confirmed that pretty much everyone else out there in cyberspace felt the same way. 

Welcome to the world of online echo chambers, where one particular school of thought is constantly repeated and never challenged. This lack of impartiality can be damaging if the opinion is an extreme one – especially for younger people who are generally more inclined to believe it. Our #WakeUpWednesday guide has the essentials for parents and carers. 

This free online safety guide examine echo chambers – how they work; why they’re potentially harmful to impressionable young internet users; and what trusted adults need to know.

Please find the National Online Safety guide for Ten Top Tips for Stronger Passwords below.

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According to a Google survey, more than half of us (52%, to be exact) routinely re-use the same passwords, with around one in ten employing a single password across all of their online accounts. What that means, of course, is that any hacker successfully cracking our password would find themselves with access to not simply one of our online accounts, but several (at least).

That, along with the fact that many people’s favoured passwords aren’t exactly impenetrable, makes it easier to see why some sources put the number of online accounts being broken into at around 100 per second. Yes, you read that right: 100 per second. To help give you some extra peace of mind about your digital data, our #WakeUpWednesday guide has some tips on setting more secure passwords.

In the guide you’ll find a number of top tips on setting stronger passwords such as how to get creative, what to avoid, and the value of multi-factor authentication.