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 this week’s tips:
TikTok Bop Girls
Another week and another new trend is emerging, this time going by the horrible name of ‘Bop girls’ or the even more awful ‘mattress actresses’.
This is something that is marketed to young girls as a quick and easy way to make money, by making hyper-sexualised content and sharing on TikTok which is often used as a gateway to other sites such as OnlyFans. I have linked to a couple of articles from my colleague Darren Laur below which are worth reading to understand this trend.
Link: Where does the term BOP come from and what is a BOP house?
Link: Online trend – TikTok BOP girls.
For Parents – New YouTube Feature
One of the most common concerns from parents when it comes to YouTube is the lack of parental management features, in other words the videos their children can and should not see. Many parents I speak to don’t know that there are features within both the main YouTube app and the YouTube Kids app. As such I have shared these features in this newsletter a few times in the past.
But Google have now released another feature, specifically this allows a parent to set up a Supervised Experience account on the parents device. This is important because many younger children will watch YouTube videos on their parents device, where it is likely there are no restrictions in place. So this new feature is a welcome addition.
To tie all these features together I have produced an article explaining Supervised Experience (on the main YouTube app) and Parent Allowlisting (on the YouTube Kids app)
Link: YouTube Settings for Parents
