I’m visiting with colleagues in England today as part of Symantec’s efforts to support the launch of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS)’s Internet Safety Strategy campaign. We co-hosted a roundtable discussion with Peter Bradley of Kidscape, the UK anti-bullying nonprofit and invited leading media representatives from news, magazines and online sites geared towards UK parents. The key element of the campaign is the development of Click Clever, Click Safe “digital code” meant to highlight the things parents can encourage their children to do: Zip It; Block It; Flag It.
Zip It – Keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online.
Block It – Block people who send nasty messages and don’t open unknown links and attachments.
Flag It – Flag up (report it) with someone you trust if anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline.
What excites me about this campaign is that it’s just the first element in a much larger program to bring internet safety education into the school curriculum throughout the United Kingdom and for children ages 5 and up. As of today, the campaign has a dedicated website where parents and young people can get more information at www.direct.gov.uk/clickcleverclicksafe. As time goes on, the site will be filled out with more resource materials, instructions and links for reporting (or flagging) inappropriate sites, content and behavior.
Beginning in September 2011, the schools will have their curriculum in place to bring internet safety education right into the classroom. Hopefully we’ll see a campaign geared towards the parents so they can reinforce the information shared in the school and so parents can be educated as well.
The UK has shown real leadership in looking at ways government can help in the education of the public about internet safety. A few years ago, Gordon Brown’s government asked Dr. Tanya Byron to bring together experts in the fields of child safety, nonprofits, security, technology and telecom companies and more to explore ways children could be made safer on the internet. Her report, The Byron Review, went beyond examining the subject and included key recommendations of what the government and industry could do better. Dr. Byron has publicly commented on her frustration at the slow progress made since the release of her report in 2008. I wonder if she views the introduction of the campaign and development of the educational curriculum as a milestone.
One recommendation from the Byron Review was to create an environment of “shared responsibility” for protecting children online. Too often, parents say that the responsibility for keeping the internet child safe belongs to the companies who host the websites our children visit or that the schools ought to teach the children. Even with the introduction of the digital code, the financing of the UK educational program and the launch of the website, the role of parents in educating our children remains the most important one. I hope parents in the UK will support the Click Clever; Click Safe campaign and make one small change today to do so: change their child’s computer’s home page to the Click Clever; Click Safe website. That way, every time their children login to the computer, they will be visually reminded to Zip It; Block It and Flag It.
I also hope parents will install and use the free OnlineFamily.Norton family safety service. We’ve just launched it the UK. For those parents who aren’t tech savvy, I hope other parents will help them and offer to set it up for them. It’s one of those small steps that can help parents introduce young children to the internet with safeguards. Then as the children get older, the restrictions or limits you set in the House Rules can be adjusted to provide more online freedom.
Read more about Symantec’s launch of OnlineFamily.Norton in the UK to coincide with Safer Internet Day, February 9th, 2010. The theme for 2010’s Safer Internet Day is “ThinkB4 U Post” which matches up well with the meaning of “Zip It; Block It; Flag It.”
Read about the Family Online Safety Institute (I’m on their board) and their member organizations efforts for Safer Internet Day.
Read about Kidscape, the UK nonprofit dedicated to cyberbully education and prevention and their support for Safer Internet Day.