Manchester United Supports Safer Internet Day

Manchester United is supporting Safer Internet Day (#SID2015) to help us all learn to use the internet more safely.

Did you know? Every minute, worldwide, there are: 700,000 Google searches; 320 new Twitter accounts created and almost 100,000 tweets; 6,000 new pictures uploaded to Flickr; 700,000 Facebook updates; 168 million emails sent; 370,000 minutes of calls on Skype and 600 new videos posted on YouTube.

What might you be concerned about? The internet is amazing - it can be used for many things. It's great for researching, doing homework, and following Manchester United. It can be fun using things like multiplayer online games, search engines, email and social media but at the same time there are also many dangers. Have you heard about these things on the news? Cyber-bullying; Identity theft; Fraud, Viruses; Phishing; Sexting; Grooming; Inappropriate images; Web-cams and live web chat; Terrorist recruitment and extremism; Illegal downloading (music & video). You or your family can only be a couple of clicks away from things like these whenever you are on the internet.

What to do if you are a parent? Parents and carers play a key role in supporting children to learn about how to stay safe online, and they are one of the first people children turn to if things go wrong. We know it can be difficult to stay on top of the wide range of sites and devices that young people use, so we hope that the following advice helps.

Four steps for parents: 1. Have ongoing conversations with your children about staying safe online 2. Use safety tools on social networks and other online services, eg Facebook privacy settings 3. Decide if you want to use parental controls on your home internet 4. Understand devices and the parental control tools they offer in our Parents' Guide to Technology

Where can I find out more?

There is a lot of information available about keeping safe on the internet:

Safer Internet Day - www.saferinternet.org

ThinkUKnow - www.thinkuknow.co.uk is aimed at children to help them understand the dangers better which different micro-sites depending on how old you are; this is part of the CE-OP awareness programme

CE-OP - www.ceop.police.uk is a portal to other micro-sites but has sections for parents, carers and professionals such as teachers.

Credit: manutd.com