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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Useful resources for Parents and Carers

09 June 2016

Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes, provides detailed insight into media use, attitudes and understanding among UK adults aged 16 and over. It covers TV, radio, mobile, games and the internet and can be found here.

Findings include:

• a considerable rise (10 percentage points over a year to 16%) in the proportion of adults who only use smartphones or tablets to go online, rather than a PC or laptop. This indicates that these devices are not just supplementing PCs and laptops, but are starting to replace them;

• a sizeable increase (11 percentage points over a year to 42%) in the proportion of internet users who say they only use websites or apps that they’ve used before. This trend, which is particularly prominent in over 25s, points to a narrowing use of the internet, with people focusing on content and apps that they use regularly;

• seven in ten adults now use a smartphone, the device most used for accessing social media and the preferred device for the majority of online activities. Mobile phones have become the media device people would miss most, overtaking the television set; and

• half of adults (51%) that use search engines are not aware that the top items on many results pages are adverts or sponsored links, indicating there is a need for people to be more aware or savvy about the content they are accessing online.

Access the report here

08 June 2016

There’s been quite a bit of chat about the app ooVoo on the helpline recently, particularly in relation to younger user’s safety. With that in mind, we thought the following information might be helpful.

Firstly a bit about the app: It’s a video chat and messaging app, which allows up to 12 people to connect for free. Think Skype or Facetime but with 12 people communicating at the same time. Designed for over 13’s, it promises users the highest quality video calls.

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06 June 2016

'Every time you do a voice search, Google records it. And if you’re an Android user, every time you say “Ok Google,” the company records that, too. Don’t freak out, though, because Google lets you hear (and delete) these recordings. Here’s how'

 

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01 March 2016

'Remember “celebgate” – the widespread hack of hundreds of iCloud accounts which saw the internet flooded with intimate pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna and a whole host of others?

Google certainly does. A search for celebgate returns over 360,000 results.

Take that same search term over to Kiddle – the new child friendly search engine that filters out the filth – and what do you get? Nothing. Not a single result.

That’s because Kiddle, which has a Google Custom Search bar embedded in the site, filters out all adult content.

Some search terms return no results while others, such as “spank” or “Pamela Anderson” make the cartoon robot glower from the search engine’s moon-based theme as it tells you that you tried to search for “some bad words.”'

 

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