PARENTS have been urged to talk to their children about sharing information online after a survey exposed the ease with which youngsters can access unsuitable content.
The NSPCC will today launch a new campaign to advise parents on how to address the issue after a panel of more than 500 parents from Mumsnet reviewed 48 social media websites and said all those aimed at adults and teenagers were too easy for children under 13 to sign-up to.
On more than 40 per cent of the sites, the panel struggled to locate privacy, reporting and safety information.
The charity asked just under 2,000 children and young people which social networking sites they used, then had parents review 48 popular social networking sites, apps and games including Sickipedia, DeviantArt and F my Life. Three quarters of parents were able to find sexual, violent or inappropriate content on all three sites within half an hour.
The survey found no unsuitable content on entertainment sites for younger children such as Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters, Popjam and Bearville.
NSPCC Scotland says its helpline regularly hears from children and adults who are worried about online safety. One adult from Aberdeen called because she was worried about a young teenage girl who was in a relationship with an 18 year old. "I saw an image of her performing a sex act that had been posted online," she said. "You can clearly identify that it's her and the image seems to have been widely shared. I'm really concerned for her."
The NSPCC has used the reviews to create an online guide, Share Aware, to help inform parents about the risks of different social networking sites used by children.
Matt Forde, NSPCC Scotland national head of service, said: "Children are taught from an early age that it is good to share but doing so online can be very dangerous. This Christmas many children will have been given a smart phone, a tablet computer, or a games console. So it's the perfect opportunity for parents to have that important conversation about who they are talking to and what they share when they socialise online.
"We know that children do take risks online, sometimes without realising it. Our Share Aware campaign gives parents straightforward, no-nonsense advice that will help them to untangle the web and feel confident talking to their children about online safety."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article