What advice can I give my students to help protect them from online grooming?
Online child sex offenders use chat rooms, gaming sites and social networking services to make contact with young people with the intention of persuading them into online or offline sexual activity. Often referred to as "online grooming”, this is a criminal offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
CEOP: ‘Clare thought she knew’
This film from the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre focuses on online safety and how to report abuse.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre acknowledged in 2008 that social networking websites - which integrate personal profiles, email, instant messaging, games and photo sharing - enable information-gathering on a child and grooming to take place in one online environment.
With digital cameras, camera phones and webcams becoming increasingly popular, young people could be at heightened risk if they post sexually-provocative images online or share them via a mobile, for example. In some cases, they might do this at the request of someone they have met online. You can find more advice about photos, videos and webcams here.
To help protect your students from online grooming:
- Explain that not everyone online is who they say they are and advise them to not give out personal information to people they meet on the internet.
- Direct them to ThinkUKnow, a website run by CEOP, which provides excellent advice for young people across three age categories (5-7 year olds, 8-10 year olds and 11-16 year olds).
- You can also find lots of information specifically for teachers, as well as teaching resources on this topic on ThinkUKnow
- If you're worried that one of your students is at risk of child abuse online (or offline, following contact made online), inform a senior manager and your school's e-safety co-ordinator and report it to CEOP immediately. If you think they could be in immediate danger, contact the police too.
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