An online activity that provides helpful guidance on how to keep your data and personal information more secure.

Take the test

A short video outlining issues around young people, celebrities and body image.

A helpful guide to setting parental controls on common platforms here.

Structure of this report

Following the Executive Summary in section 1 the report has a two-part structure as follows:

Part 1 The Context of the Internet

Section 2 - Opportunities, risks and challenges

Takes an overview of children's access to the open internet as an educational resource, as a platform for communication and creativity, but also as a source of distinct risks around content, contact and conduct, with specific regulatory challenges.

Section 3 - Parental mediation: managing the risks to children

Describes the tactics of parents, carers and educators in guiding and informing children's behaviour through education and advice, mediation and rules as critical aspects of child protection online.

Section 4 - Safety mechanisms and the role of industry

Describes in detail many of the tools and mechanisms offered to parents to protect their children online and notes some of the issues around such tools. It does so within a simplified model of the internet from content origination to content reception by the user and gives an overview of the status of internet intermediaries like ISPs.

Part 2 The Research

Section 5 - Children and the internet: use and concerns

Sets the context for mediation by looking at key changes in children's use of the internet, their likes and dislikes compared to the online concerns of parents.

Section 6 - Parental mediation strategies: take -up, awareness of and confidence of parents in relation to parental controls

Provides both quantitative figures and qualitative insights to create an in-depth picture of the broad range of online mediation strategies employed by parents and their levels of confidence about their ability to keep their children safe online.

Section 7 - Safety measures on sites regularly visited by children

Looks at the research available regarding parental mediation of websites regularly visited by children, including search engines, YouTube and social networking sites.

Section 8 - Why parents choose not to apply parental control tools

Looks at the various reasons why some parents choose not to install parental controls.

The full document is available here

'By using various forms of parental controls, in conjunction with some common sense, we can do much to protect our children when they are using the internet.

By following our tips for some of the more popular platforms your kids are likely to be using, you can increase their chances of staying safe and emotionally secure online.'

Read the article here

Twitter can be a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, and keep abreast of what's going on in the world. However, as with all online platforms, there are a few risks - such as hackers, who attempt to take control of people's accounts in order to misuse them.

Read the article here.