Netsafe News May Edition

Netsafe News May Edition

May was an interesting month for the Netsafe team. We supported Bullying Free Week, Privacy Week and also released New Zealand’s first ever research into digital self-harm in New Zealand teenagers.

We know these findings may be of concern to parents, teachers and others who care for young people. Our advice is to treat all cases of online bullying seriously – regardless of who is sending the harmful messages. If you’re concerned a young person may be being bullied online or may be engaging in digital self-harm you can contact us on 0508 638 723 for help and advice.

Finally, I’d like to encourage you to take a few minutes to complete the Netsafe Schools survey. The Netsafe Schools programme helps schools establish, develop and promote online safety, digital citizenship and wellbeing in their school community. We’re currently reviewing how we could make it even better and your feedback is an important part of the process.

Martin Cocker
Netsafe CEO

BYOD advice for parents and schools

As Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) becomes more common in schools it’s even more important that parents and whānau have good advice about how to keep their children safe online. We’ve teamed up with CERT NZ to put together our top online safety tips. This downloadable resource can be printed and given to parents or shared as a digital PDF.

If your school has a BYOD programme, this guide can provide some help for parents and whānau on what to look out for when purchasing a device and some basic tips on keeping their children safe online.

View our BYOD guide

Netsafe LIVE heads to Palmerston North

At Netsafe LIVE events, our education advisors Anjie Webster and Pauline Spence talk about the risks, challenges and opportunities of digital technology and the practical ways to help. There are sessions for school leaders, educators and parents.

Netsafe LIVE events have been held everywhere between Whangarei and Invercargill since we started them. The next Netsafe Live event will be in Palmerston North on June 26, 2019.

If you have questions about the next event or if you’d like to co-host Netsafe LIVE, please email [email protected].

Upcoming Netsafe LIVE events

We'd love your feedback about Netsafe Schools

We created the Netsafe Schools programme to help schools establish, develop and promote online safety, digital citizenship and wellbeing in their community. As the programme has been live for a year, we are looking at how the Netsafe School programme is working for schools. And we’d love your feedback!

We’ve already identified a number of changes that could make it better and encourage more schools to become a Netsafe School, but we would like to hear from you before implementing anything. Your feedback is an important part of our review process and we’d appreciate it you could take some time tocomplete our short survey.

Take the Netsafe Schools Survey

Digital self-harm research released

Netsafe’s first research into digital self-harm provides insights into the extent and nature of digital self-harm among New Zealand teens. These findings will be important to anyone working with young people.

Digital self-harm appears to be more prevalent among younger teenagers, those aged 13 and 14 years old. Another findings is that girls and boys have different reasons for engaging in digital self-harm:

  • Girls reported wanting to show resilience, looking for friends’ sympathy, and seeking reassurance of friendship.
  • Meanwhile, for boys it was mainly about making a joke.
Learn more about this research by reading Netsafe’s full report.

 

Read the report

Sign up for updates about eSafety19

Netsafe and Australia’s Office of the eSafety Commissioner are proud to co-host the upcoming eSafety19 Conference in Sydney. The conference will be held from 11 – 12 September 2019.

Join the world’s foremost academics, industry leaders, policy implementers, educators and young people, to help tackle the most important online safety issues of our time. Lend your voice to this vital conversation and help create the online world we want.

You can register now to receive programme information and access to earlybird tickets. Our members will receive a discounted ticket rate for this conference. If you are not yet a Netsafe Member you still have time to apply.

Register now

Want to add something to the next newsletter?

If you have an online safety event or resource that you want to let people know about, please let us know by emailing [email protected]

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