Every week e-safety adviser Alan Mackenzie sends me weekly updates. They are useful teaching resources but also parent guides to keep you up to date with current trends.
Here are a few tips from this week’s updates:
For Parents – Should I Use Screentime as a Reward?
It’s such a difficult one for parents, we’re living in a time where screen use starts at a very early age. But should we use screen time to support positive behaviours or even take away screens as a punishment? The answer is that there is no single answer, it very much depends on individual circumstances, but it was a question posed to some experts on Internet Matters which will hopefully give parents some food for thought.
The article from the Internet Matters website can be seen by clicking HERE.
Character.AI – Teens Banned from Chatbots
Since it first came out a few years ago, Character.AI (and other AI chatbots) have been a significant safeguarding concern for many highly inappropriate chats, advice, and even instrumental in some really tragic outcomes, with some AI companies, including Character.AI facing lawsuits. What would be basic common sense to most ordinary people is that some services are simply not suitable for children, but tech companies continue to fail over and over again and it’s usually only down to intense public and media attention where you see positive action being taken.
In the case of Character.AI, as of 25th Nov under 18’s will no longer be able to use the chat function, they will only be able to generate content such as videos rather than talk to the characters. This is a welcome move, and a guardrail that should have existed from the very start, but it’s one of many chatbots that are out there (just look on the Apple App store and Google Play to see how sexualised many of them are). In my personal experience speaking with younger children I know that children from around the age of 7 are using chatbots for a variety of reasons, one of the main (concerning) ones being loneliness.
You can read the full article about Character.AI on the BBC website HERE.
