As I get ready to head off to speak at another parent Cyber Safety education evening tonight, the news about a forum hosting nude photos of underage girls from over 70 Australian schools has been revealed. No doubt there will be questions tonight from the parents about this horrific story. Cyber safety educators, parents, police… Continue Reading
This story ran in the Manly Daily today. A horrible story about teens apparently throwing a lamb around and filming it, at a northern beaches school. The sheep and its mother have been traumatised and severely injured, the mother lamb may die from her injuries. The community is angry and horrified. Update: According… Continue Reading
This years survey from Interactive Games & Entertainment Association – IGEA which included a study of parental awareness of game classifications, showed that many Australian Parents are not really using Video Game and App Classifications to make decisions before purchasing or downloading games for their children. Some of those surveyed were also quite confused by the ratings,… Continue Reading
The “YouTube Kids” video app rated 4+ from Google has just been released in Australia after a long wait. This child friendly version of the YouTube app was released in the U.S February 2015 and promoted as suitable for under 5 year olds. However when it was released in the United States there were a lot of… Continue Reading
The American Academy Of Paediatrics have recently released some new guidelines for screen use by children. Previously they recommended no screen time for children under 2 years of age, and 2 hours per day for children under 18 years of age. Whilst children were not using screens for school and for homework, that might… Continue Reading
The popular video app YouTube is now set with an age restriction of 17+ on iTunes. This has changed fairly recently, it was set at 13+ previously. The increase in age limit on iTunes is definitely justified due to the adult content on YouTube. (Now if we can get Facebook set at 13+ instead of… Continue Reading
Preventing your child from accessing adult content on the home iPad or computers can be one of the more challenging issues that parents have to face in the age of the digital revolution. Many parents have no idea how to restrict adult content, and may also not be aware that their child maybe already accessing pornography online,… Continue Reading
There are reports from some parents that the latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows 10, is now automatically sending parents a detailed report of their children’s computer activity when parents add their child to a Microsoft Family account. Parents may have previously set up Windows 8 on their child’s computer and added that child’s Microsoft account to a… Continue Reading
I was invited to be part of today’s Channel 7’s Daily Edition program to discuss some new findings from a recent Australian study of 1,200 teens and their experiences with sexting, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Mail UK. The term sexting refers to the practice of sending sexual photos to another person via… Continue Reading
This is THE most common phrase that I hear after I’m contacted by a parent when something has gone wrong for their child online. The second most common phrase is, “I’m really clueless about all of this, I wish I knew more”. The reason these parents are contacting me and saying one of those two… Continue Reading