Stay Safe
Protect personal information, recognise suspicious messages, and seek help when something feels unsafe.
Digital skills are about more than knowing how to use a device. Students also need to protect their privacy, evaluate online information, communicate respectfully, recognise risks, and make responsible choices in digital spaces.
Students use technology to learn, communicate, create, play, and explore. Digital citizenship helps them understand how their online choices affect their privacy, wellbeing, relationships, and reputation.
Protect personal information, recognise suspicious messages, and seek help when something feels unsafe.
Communicate thoughtfully, respect differences, and avoid harassment or humiliating others online.
Question online claims, check reliable sources, and avoid sharing information before verifying it.
Digital environments can make communication quick and convenient, but they can also make it easier to misunderstand tone, share information impulsively, encounter misleading content, or interact with strangers.
Children and teenagers may not always recognise the long-term consequences of a post, the sensitivity of personal information, or the difference between a persuasive claim and reliable evidence.
Digital citizenship gives families and schools a practical way to discuss these situations before problems occur. It encourages thoughtful decision-making instead of relying only on restrictions or warnings.
Posts, screenshots, and shared content can be copied or circulated beyond the original audience.
Edited images, fake accounts, rumours, and unsupported claims can confuse users.
Messages can be misunderstood, while group chats may amplify teasing or exclusion.
Unplanned device use can interfere with sleep, schoolwork, movement, and offline relationships.
Parents and teachers can use these strategies in everyday conversations, classroom activities, online assignments, and family technology routines.
Explain that full names, home addresses, phone numbers, passwords, live locations, school schedules, and private family details should not be shared carelessly online.
Teach students to check what an app or website requests and why it may need that information. Encourage them to ask a trusted adult before sharing sensitive details, granting unusual permissions, or uploading identifying photographs.
Help students understand that passwords protect access to their accounts. Encourage unique, hard-to-guess passwords and a password manager where appropriate and permitted by family or school policy.
Students should never share passwords with classmates or enter login details through unexpected links. Where available, additional account verification can provide another layer of protection. A trusted adult should help younger children manage security settings.
A digital footprint is the information and activity associated with a person's use of digital services. Posts, comments, photographs, public profiles, and content shared by others may contribute to the picture people form online.
Teach students to pause before posting and consider whether content is respectful, appropriate for its intended audience, and safe to share. Explain that deleting a post does not guarantee that every copy disappears.
Without facial expressions or tone of voice, a message can sound harsher than its author intended. Encourage students to reread messages before sending them, disagree with ideas rather than attacking people, and avoid insults, threats, and humiliating comments.
Students should also respect other people's boundaries, avoid forwarding private conversations without permission, and remember that a group chat does not remove individual responsibility.
Cyberbullying can involve repeated online harassment, threats, humiliation, exclusion, or the circulation of harmful content. Students should know that online cruelty is not acceptable simply because it happens through a screen.
Teach them not to retaliate or forward harmful material. They can save relevant evidence safely when appropriate, block or report an account, and tell a trusted adult. If there is a threat of immediate harm, seek urgent help from responsible adults or local emergency services.
Students who witness harmful behaviour can support the affected person, report the content, and avoid adding attention to the abuse.
Online information may be accurate, incomplete, misleading, outdated, or deliberately false. A professional-looking website or a widely shared post is not proof that a claim is true.
Encourage students to identify the original source, check the publication date, compare the claim with independent reliable sources, and distinguish evidence from opinion. For images and videos, consider whether the context could be missing or manipulated.
Messages that create urgency, promise unexpected rewards, request money, or ask users to reveal confidential details deserve careful attention. Fake accounts may pretend to represent a friend, school, company, or familiar service.
Students should verify unusual requests through a separate trusted channel, avoid opening suspicious attachments, and report suspected scams to an adult. They should not assume that a familiar profile picture proves an account is genuine.
Technology can support learning and creativity, but unplanned use may displace sleep, physical activity, homework, and face-to-face interaction. Help students notice how different online activities affect their attention, mood, and daily responsibilities.
Create age-appropriate routines, take breaks, protect sleep time, and establish device-free moments such as meals or family conversations. Focus on the child's overall routine and needs rather than relying on a single screen-time number for every situation.
AI tools can help students brainstorm, practise, and explore ideas, but their outputs can contain mistakes, invented details, bias, or incomplete explanations.
Students should verify important claims, follow school rules about permitted assistance, protect personal information, and be honest about the help they received. They should not submit AI-generated work as entirely their own when the assignment requires independent work.
Explain that an AI response is not automatically correct simply because it sounds confident.
Students may hide online problems because they fear losing device access or being blamed. Adults can reduce this barrier by responding calmly, listening carefully, and focusing first on safety.
Explain that asking for help is a responsible choice. Students should know whom to contact at home and school if they encounter harassment, suspicious requests, uncomfortable content, or an account-security problem.
Before posting, clicking, downloading, or responding, students can use this simple sequence to make a more considered decision.
Children learn digital habits through experience, observation, and conversations with adults. A supportive approach combines clear boundaries with opportunities to ask questions and practise safe decisions.
Digital citizenship can be practised through lessons, research assignments, group work, classroom technology policies, and respectful online collaboration.
This fictional example shows how digital citizenship skills can help a student respond to an unexpected online message.
A student receives a message claiming they have won a school competition. The message asks them to click an unfamiliar link and enter their name, phone number, account password, and a verification code to claim a prize.
Students can use this checklist to reflect on their everyday online choices. It is a learning aid, not a test or a guarantee of safety.
These are the knowledge, habits, and judgement students need to use digital technology responsibly. They include online safety, privacy, respectful communication, source evaluation, digital wellbeing, and responsible participation in online communities.
Children can start learning simple rules as soon as they begin using digital devices, with guidance appropriate to their age. As their online independence increases, lessons can expand to privacy, scams, misinformation, digital footprints, and online communication.
They can think before posting, limit unnecessary personal information, review privacy settings, ask permission before sharing other people's content, and remember that deleted content may have been copied or saved.
They should avoid retaliating, tell a trusted adult, and use available blocking and reporting tools. Evidence may be saved safely when appropriate. Threats, exploitation, and serious safety concerns require prompt adult assistance and appropriate reporting.
Families can create predictable routines, protect sleep, include offline activities, agree on device-free moments, and review whether technology is interfering with responsibilities or relationships. Expectations should reflect the child's age and circumstances.
Yes, when use is age-appropriate and follows family and school rules. Students should verify important outputs, protect personal information, disclose assistance where required, and ensure their work reflects the learning expected by the assignment.
Digital citizenship develops through practical learning, thoughtful conversations, clear expectations, and consistent adult guidance. Parents and educators can help students build safer and more responsible digital habits.
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