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:
Study – The Gender Gap
Last week Internet Matters released their new study as part of their Digital Wellbeing index. This is now in its fourth year and is an annual UK household survey of 1,000 children aged 9-16. This time Internet Matters are looking at the online lives of children through the lens of gender, exploring how boys and girls spend their time online, what harms they are encountering and how they respond to it.
There is lots of really useful information in the report, some of the key findings are:
• The difference between boys’ and girls’ online lives are becoming less pronounced in terms of time spent on social media.
• Girls are more likely to encounter online harm and experience more distress.
• Girls are more likely to talk to someone, boys are more likely to take action on the platform.
• Parents of boys are particularly worried about loneliness.
Here is the Internet Matters The Gender Gap report.
Social Media and the AI Shift
For many years we’ve been talking about the benefits and risks of social platforms, it sometimes feels we’re stuck like a broken record continually talking about the same things. But unsurprisingly a shift is happening.
Historically, social media has predominantly been about consumption: endless scrolling through algorithmically driven content with companies using very simple but clever persuasive design techniques to get us in their platform, keep us in there for longer and keep us coming back over and over again.
But enter Generative AI, and I’m not talking about images and videos. In my talks with children and young people their use of AI to generate visuals is uncommon, but their use of AI to interact and engage with AI assistants (e.g. chatbots) is on the increase where, as my good friend Darren (aka The White Hatter) put it, quote users are turning to AI to help them think, decide, plan, connect and cope unquote – in other words an emotional connection, an attachment, a parasocial relationship where the bot becomes a trusted ‘person’.
We’ve all seen the headlines where AI assistants have given the most appalling advice despite apparent safeguards. The biggest headlines at the moment are all about the Online Safety Act, banning social media from under 16’s and banning phones in schools. None of these will have any meaningful impact in relation to the shift that is currently happening.
Darren has written a great, thought provoking article: From Social Media to Social AI; A Youth and Teen Paradigm Shift.
Set Up Safe Guide
Once again Internet Matters have put together a brilliant new resource for parents and carers. This time it’s a Set Up Safe guide which simplifies all the confusing tech/device settings advising that online safety works best when it’s shaped around how children actually use their devices, it’s all about ‘layering’.
Download and read the Internet Matters Layer Up for Online Safety Guide
