Child online safety 'as important as a bike helmet'

Children are being taught about online safety in school

Parents thinking of giving children a mobile phone for Christmas should treat it as a gift that needs safety equipment - much like providing a helmet with a bike, safety bosses have said.

Parliament was recently told children were suffering from online bullying, harmful images and location tracking, while Australia's leaders have approved a ban on under-16s using social media - a move the UK government said was "on the table".

The Lincolnshire Stay Safe Partnership, which runs classes and workshops about online safety in schools, said it was aware of children as young as six or seven who had discovered inappropriate material on their phones.

It said the "genie is out of the bottle" when it comes to children entering the digital world, so tools were needed to navigate it safely.

Kathryn Smith says parents should regularly check-in with their children about their mobile phone use

Kathryn Smith, from the Lincolnshire County Council-led team, said: "If we give our kid a bike for Christmas, we're going to give them a helmet because there's a probability that if they're learning to ride a bike, they're going to fall off, and we would talk to our children about that risk," she said.

"It is no different to the online world. It's really important that [parents] have that open conversation with children and young people about the different risks that they could face online, what to do if that should happen, and have regular check-ins with them about what they are watching and learn about apps together."

The team's Dan Hawbrook recently tested students at Witham St Hugh Academy near Lincoln to see if they could identify fake images. They were surprised to learn every picture had been AI-generated.

"We want to equip [young people] with the tools that they need in order to navigate a digital world safely, because it's always going to be here," he said.

Dan Hawbrook showed Witham St Hugh Academy pupils AI-generated images

Witham St Hughs Academy head teacher Richard Stock said only Year 5 and 6 children were allowed mobile phones at school, for safety reasons and with parental consent.

During the day, phones were locked in a cabinet that students had nicknamed "the phone prison".

"Many children do have phones and I think they have their uses, certainly from the safety aspect," he said. "But I think from a school point of view, I think our responsibility is to make sure we educate them properly to be able to use them safely and appropriately."