VIEWS & OPINION


Stamping out online grooming in 2018


By CLAIRE STEAD, Online Safety Expert, Smoothwall


Calling time on sexual predators through education


Comment by SUE FREESTONE, Principal, King’s Ely


Online grooming is a subject that keeps many of us up at night and with good reason. In the UK, instances of online child sex abuse have increased by 700% since 2014 - that’s a staggering amount. In recent years there have been a number of initiatives set out to tackle this issue and online safety more widely, and last year we saw the Sexual Communication with a Child come into force. Yet even since then, we have still seen 1,300 cases of sexual communication with a child.


The access children today have to digital devices and online platforms has risen tremendously, and as it stands, 41% of 5-15-year olds own a smartphone and 44% own a tablet. Although this increase in digital access children have comes with many positives - from connecting them to friends and family, providing games for mental stimulus and enjoyment, as well as educational purposes - it has also meant children today are becoming increasingly vulnerable and open targets to groomers and bullies. In fact, recent research found the social media networks Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are most commonly used to groom children. It is not surprising, therefore, that we are seeing an urgent cry to take more forceful action to protect children from these online predators. Most recently, NSPCC called for a mandatory code to regulate social media and tackle online grooming.


Our recent research found almost four in ten (39%) of teachers are concerned with online grooming, but 62% of them don’t feel fully supported to teach children about online safety. That is why having monitoring to safeguard children is so crucial. It can help teachers – as well as moderators of websites and social media platforms – become aware of any alarming online activity, and are able to make an informed decision and alert the relevant people. With the wealth of analytics and data available to social media companies, this should be bread and butter for those platforms wanting to make a stand on online safety.


Any monitoring that occurs when children are online will be done contextually and appropriately to protect their online experience. Contextual monitoring builds a picture of what is happening and is able to make an informed decision on whether the signs indeed point to online grooming. Technology can and must be a force for good if we’re to have any chance of combatting these issues.


When it comes to the protection of children in today’s digital age and dealing with such seismic and scarring issues such as online grooming, the onus can’t lie with one party. It needs to be a collaborative effort between all those who have a responsibility to our children, from the government, educational institutions, parents and social media platform providers. Only by working together can we ensure that we have a unified front that is able to effectively crack down on the problem. But we need to ensure that all parties must feel fully supported to do so.


We should use all the technology and means we have available to ensure the online environments of young people are kept as safe and secure as possible. Having a mandatory code to regulate social media to tackle these types of issues is just the first step.


February 2018


Each day seems to bring another revelation of sexual misconduct or abuse of power by men over women. With sexual wrong- doing allegations launched against a growing number of powerful men in Hollywood – not to mention the shocking toll of accusations at the heart of our Parliament – a sorry history emerges of young people too afraid to come forward with stories of harassment and rape. Perhaps now is the time for schools to rethink how we handle the question of intimidation; how to equip young girls and boys with techniques to protect themselves in an often unjust, imperfect world; how to teach them that standing up to menace can be bold and empowering. But it can be easier said than done. Even Hillary Clinton – a self- styled ‘tough broad’ – admits to being reduced to ‘smiling all the while’ and ‘determined to present a composed face to the world’ after feeling physically intimidated by Donald Trump during the second presidential debate.


Failing to address abuse of power or sexual predation is something we do at our peril. We do address it, of course, through PSHE, through modelling correct behaviour, and via messages reiterated in assemblies. But are we sufficiently specific? Could we be inhibited by our concern that we may be corrupting rather than educating? More importantly, are we so conditioned ourselves that we fail to notice comments and accepted practice that reinforces centuries of prejudice and misplaced expectation? As a woman myself, even I find myself guilty of laughing things off rather than challenging; perhaps that is because I am a woman? I am not pretending that things have not moved on since the beginning of my own career in teaching – in some respects things have gone too far and I often find myself speaking up in defense of men. But from the age of bra-burning during my own formative years we have regressed into a time when, once again and far more explicitly, a woman is judged and judges herself, by the quality of her skin, the size of her bust, the shapeliness of her thigh and her ‘rating’ on social media. Boys are not far behind in their growing obsession with the way they look. Where has it all gone wrong? If the young adults in our schools are to become the first generation to call time on sexual predators – be that predation manifest in the Harvey Weinsteins and Kevin Spaceys of tomorrow – we have to do more to instill in them a sense of their own worth; a worth equal to that of any other human being, regardless of status. This has always been a concern associated with adolescence but we cannot start educating children too young. That is because whilst we seek to protect innocence, the world gets on with exposing ever younger children to all manner of pornography and disfigured expectation. It is time to fight back and, as is so often the case, it is only through education that such fundamental societal change can be engineered.


www.education-today.co.uk 25


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