Re: Online Safety Bill
 

Thanks and yes, you make a good point.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

They call it social media, yet 79% of young people describe themselves as lonely:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zxds

From just past halfway through.

---------- Post added at 22:00 ---------- Previous post was at 21:55 ----------

It's not just predators, trolls & bullies that target children. Scammers actively target them too:

https://www.itv.com/watch/lorraine/1a9360

The feature is approximately halfway through.

---------- Post added at 22:40 ---------- Previous post was at 22:00 ----------

It's not just predators, trolls & bullies that target children. Scammers actively target them too:

https://www.itv.com/watch/lorraine/1a9360

The feature is approximately halfway through.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

One headmaster in Notting Hill has adopted an idea for keeping pupils in years 7 & 8 off their smartphones. They start school at 7:15am and don't finish until
6:15pm. As well as extra lesson time, they also take part in extra activities like playing football. I imagine that this is also extremely helpful to working parents too.

Instead of paying to provide childcare for working parents (which the Government is finding it impossibleto provide), perhaps it would be better to utilise existing schools & put taxpayers money into funding longer schooldays for all children?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zxj6

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

That is an insane length of school day. Kids will be knackered.things like football are already part of regular school time lessons.

Also how does an 11 hour day ensure they stay off their phones? They'll still have access at break and lunch times.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

It's not 11 hours of learning time! If you added up the length of a normal schoolday to the time devoted to homework and unsupervised play after school, it's probably about the same.

I suppose they will have either banned them from bringing smartphones to school or immediately confiscate them and return them at the end of the school fay.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

Exactly, how are they going to concentrate for that long, they might be there that long but they won't be productive or constructive

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

All that just to stop them using a phone. You can't make it up.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

They won't be expected to concentrate and be in learning mode the whole time.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

They say comedy is dead, it's not it has just been renamed as the "Online Safety Bill"

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

It's now an Act of Parliament.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

They made comedy an act of parliament Excellent :D

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

tbf, there are a bunch of clowns in power at the moment…

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

An Ofcom survey has found that 42 million people have received a communication trying to scam them out of money and that 25% of these resulted in people losing money as a result.

For details on how to protect yourself and how the Online Safety Act may be able to help:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zy6v

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

And there's one born every minute...

Seriously, most of the 'Online Safety Act' could or should be the responsibility of parents, school and the person. Education should be top priority (regardless of age) and not just push blame on to others such as social media etc.

Give your bank details over the phone, then expect to get scammed. Send a dick pic expect it to be shared. Watch porn online then expect your child (or even adults) to have a warped view of what is acceptable or what is normal (what is normal)?. All could be avoided with the right information and proper education. Pushing the blame elsewhere isn't right which is all what this act does.

The problem is now young adults / parents are affected just as much as children. But they are the ones that will set the example. It's not just children that now need protecting or to be educated.

Re: Online Safety Bill
 

We all have a part to play where this is possible, by this I mean that some people are more vulnerable to scammers etc by reasons of things like age, disability, mental health issues etc. It's often the case that people think that everyone else has the same skills & capabilities of themselves, which is not the case.

A voluntary code of practice by website owners to protect vulnerable people was mostly ignored by them, so the law has had to step in to require them to protect our most vulnerable instead of them just concentrating on how much money they can make.

Your last paragraph and comment about education are both excellent points.

---------- Post added at 23:46 ---------- Previous post was at 23:22 ----------

A group of schools in Southwark are to introduce a collective principal regarding smartphones from September. This is based on a programme of education rather than an outright ban.

Phones are sometimes permitted, for example for disabled children, but if anyone is found to be using one for no good reason it will be confiscated. One child who needed access to the internet due to health concerns started using a smartwstch. To get the phone back a parent will have to come and collect it so that a dialogue can be opened.

Parents can then be informed about it causing any interruption to learning and a discussion can be had as to whether the child actually needs the smartphone, whether it should be returned to them or of a basic non smartphone would be more appropriate.

They did this after concerns about childrens health from using smartphones particularly in respect of social media.
Concerns included mental health issues, body image problems, cyber bullying, grooming, access to and viewing of innapropriate content, problems with the attention span of young people and the fact that social media is purposely engineered & designed to cause repeated engagement. The smartphones themselves as a device have been known to give rise to criminal activity.

They feel that the best way to stop young people from using social media is for staff & pupils to collaborate to enable them to make the choice not to engage with it until they are older.

It's not going to be an outright ban, though obviously pupils won't be able to start surfing the Internet during lessons.

An interview with one of the heads of one of the participating schools can be heard from about 0:15:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zw50