CONTRIBUTORS


The summer holiday online safety challenge We hear from education journalist Sal McKeown.


The summer slide is not just about falling behind in school subjects. It is also about sliding into bad habits. While many schools ban phones, children will be let loose in the summer holidays. Unless parents are forewarned and vigilant, this could be the time children come across inappropriate and disturbing content. I typed ‘sexting 2026’ in search of the latest guidance on internet safety. The first page of results included a list of sexting sites. Mashable promised ‘We’ve lined up the best apps for sending sexy messages, including AdultFriendFinder,


Tinder, and more.’ Choose the entry for DatingAdvice.com and you will see: ‘Ready to turn up the heat? Check out the best free sexting sites for spicy chats, naughty photos, and no-strings-attached fun.’ This is just the thing to appeal to boisterous adolescents. But it is not just adolescents who will access this material. Ofcom and the NSPCC constantly warn us that many younger children are accessing the internet without adult supervision. They stress the importance of settings, filters and shared conversations about what children are watching. Schools need to reinforce these messages because busy parents have enough on their plate trying to juggle work and other responsibilities for six weeks while their children are out of school.


Becoming responsible digital citizens


Boredom is a big factor in the summer. Some parents can work at home for at least part of the week when their children are off school. Nevertheless, many children have hours of unsupervised free time and the technology in their pocket to explore the digital world. While parents and schools need to do everything to protect children from online harm, prevention only goes so far. Children will look at sites that are not appropriate. Often - as with sex education - knowledge comes from friends and children will follow their lead rather than be the outsider.


Content aimed at young people tends to be more intense and less regulated. But for many young people, these sites are where they go for entertainment, information, friendship, advice and now for mental health support too.


While we tell children to avoid suspicious links and encourage them to keep to well-known, curated, safe sites, no one is ever 100% safe online. Sites get hacked. Unexpected pop-ups appear. Young people catch the news and see scenes of atrocities, torture, humiliation and distressed children in warzones. Many young people have seen shocking sights online but have chosen not to tell a parent or teacher. They have learnt ways to avoid violent or unwanted content and consider their approaches superior to adult advice, which they see as outdated and not borne out by lived experience.


Recently I have been part of a team of authors writing content for Preparing Young People for a New Digital Age. This is a new online module from TeachingTimes’ Raising Attainment with Wellbeing (RAW) course that focuses on values with questions such as: What kind of online citizen will I become? What does respect look like online? How can we resist manipulation in cyberspace? We have been looking at strategies to help young people deal with harmful content:


• Ask yourself if you really need to see this content. • Do you need to see this content now? • When possible, scroll through a video’s thumbnails to prepare yourself for what you’re about to see.


• Make the picture smaller so you are not looking at all the details • Mute the sound and use subtitles


July/August 2026 www.education-today.co.uk 19 • Do not watch it just before you go to bed


We all need to be prepared for the moment we see something that upsets us. In the moment, it feels unreal, and some people experience all the signs of shock such as turning pale, shaking uncontrollably and finding it hard to breathe normally.


People who see distressing video as part of their job, such as juries and journalists in war zones, offer useful advice about dealing with the first few minutes. Urge the person to take some deep breaths, to look round and take an inventory of their real world surroundings, mentally ticking off what they can see, hear, touch and smell. Sometimes physical exercise helps the body to return to a calmer state. Longer term, students may want to talk to others, to use apps such as Childline’s Calm Zone which has activities to help children feel better when they are feeling anxious, scared or sad. Adults can also encourage children to be proactive: to block sites and influencers producing harmful content, to report what they have seen, to check their settings and take control, actively seeking creators and content that inspire or entertain.


Putting pressure on technology companies


Things may be about to change. At London Tech Week in June, Keir Starmer challenged Apple and Google to do more to stop children creating and sharing explicit images online. If new safeguards become mandatory, the UK could become one of the first countries to place greater responsibility on technology companies, rather than expecting parents and schools to carry the burden alone.


However, technology is only part of the answer. As schools break up for the summer, the most effective protection may be a combination of better technology, informed parents and young people who know how to navigate the online world responsibly.


Childline’s Calm Zone: uhttps://www.childline.org.uk/toolbox/calm-zone/


For further information about RAW and Preparing Young People for a New Digital Age, email enquiries@teachingtimes.com.


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