SECTION 3
Putting young people at the heart of online safety support
Giving young people agency and ensuring their voices are heard, in relation to the online world isn’t just good practice – it’s also their right.
Global children’s rights
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely signed treaty in history, having been signed by 195 countries. The convention lays out 54 articles that explain the rights of the child in all parts of their lives. In recent years, the UN has said publicly that all children’s rights apply in the digital world. They have also asked that those working to reduce harms faced online need to balance this with the promotion of beneficial activities, and the prioritisation of children’s voices.
Online and offline, all children have the right to protection from harm, discrimination, exploitation, or abuse, including sexual exploitation and abuse. Anyone in a position close to children has a duty to uphold and protect these rights. Children also have the right to rest and play using services that are safe and appropriate for their age, and for those services to protect them from violence and abuse in all forms.
Do you work in education?
If your setting is providing online safety education for children and young people, try to ensure that the sessions are interactive and engaging and allow opportunities for children to use their voices and express their ideas. It is also useful to offer children opportunities to provide feedback on what they were taught, and how useful, relevant, and engaging they found it.
Using young people’s ideas and feedback to inform your future activities, and making it clear how you have done so, can help children feel that their voices are valued, and their ideas and views have direct impact. This also helps ensure that lessons are consistently useful and relevant and can help create a safe and supportive environment for communication. This in turn can help give young people increased confidence to come forward and share any concerns they may have about their online experiences.
How the experiences of children and young people can inform your work
Whatever your role, youth voice can be utilised in a wide range of ways to inform your work and heighten its impact and quality. In schools, many choose to elect children and young people as school counsellors, prefects, or other student leaders. These roles are a great starting point for anyone looking to use children and young people’s voices to inform their practice.
FOR EXAMPLE
Before developing and launching a unit of work on online safety, one school chose to have pupil counsellors run discussions in their classes. These discussions gave children and young people a space to voice their concerns about online safety, as well as their ideas about what would engage them in the lessons. Each pupil counsellor was given an opportunity to feed the key ideas back to staff, who were then given time to incorporate them into their planning. This process was then repeated at the end of the unit of work, with the goal of exploring how impactful and engaging the lessons were.
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