We have been thinking about social media. The children in P5 looked at a picture of all the different Icons used to get onto social media Apps.
Pupils were able to come up with the names of 11 different platforms such as; Tictock, instagram, facebook and whatsapp. We identified these and then had a discussion about what age, they thought you needed to be, in order to use these sites. We then went onto childnet and NSPCC websites to find out if they were right.
Here is the information we found:
- WhatsApp have just announced a new age limit of 16 for users based in Europe.
- Nearly all other social media services require users to be at least 13 years of age to access and use their services. This includes Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Musical.ly and Skype.
The children were surprised that the appropriate ages were as high as 13 and 16.
We then looked at a fake social media profile provided by Childnet.com which aims to teach children about how to keep safe on social media. Some points that we decided were very important were:
- Never put personal details on such as your address.
- Don't post photos that you may regret putting onto the internet as they are there forever.
- Don't put photos on which show you in your school uniform as this will identify the school you attend.
- Check your privacy settings.
- Only accept friend requests from people you know.
We had a super discussion about keeping safe, what the pros and cons of social media are and the age restrictions that exist to keep children off social media platforms.
Thank you P5 for taking part in today's discussion.
