During Alert Level 4 our rangatahi are spending more time online accessing their learning, and perhaps spending more time socialising via social media platforms. Netsafe offers advice to parents about how they can increase safety online. They also offer a service where young people can report online bullying incidents.

N4L (Network for Learning) has set up a free safety filter for parents to set up on their child’s learning device. Go to switchonsafety.co.nz to find instructions about how to do this. The safety filter can block websites that pose a threat, such as phishing scams, viruses and inappropriate content.

Netsafe’s online parent safety toolkit is also a useful resource.

The Harmful Digital Communications Act (2015) was developed to protect individuals from online bullying and harassment. Below are the 10 key principles from the act that we encourage our students to consider during their online interactions with others.

What are the 10 communication principles?

A digital communication should not:

1. disclose sensitive personal facts about an individual
2. be threatening, intimidating, or menacing
3. be grossly offensive to a reasonable person in the position of the affected individual
4. be indecent or obscene
5. be used to harass an individual
6. make a false allegation
7. contain a matter that is published in breach of confidence
8. incite or encourage anyone to send a message to an individual for the purpose of causing harm to the individual
9. incite or encourage an individual to commit suicide
10. denigrate an individual by reason of colour, race, ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability

We encourage families to discuss and reinforce these digital communication principles at home. Should your child experience online bullying, particularly during this lockdown period, we recommend contacting Netsafe to report any incidents of concern, so that appropriate steps can be taken by the social media platform involved.

https://report.netsafe.org.nz/hc/en-au/requests/new