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The Community Safety Team from South Yorkshire Police have raised concerns around inappropriate internet use by children starting with children as young as four.

With younger children the content these children are sharing tends to be on parents/carers accounts, who are completely unaware that this has happened until their account is locked, or they have a knock on the door from the Police.

Below are the statistics from South Yorkshire Police to illustrate the increase in this type of referral:

Last year 11 % of referrals were for safeguarding concerns such as self-generated image uploads, sextortion and sexualised chat between a child and an adult. This year there has been a huge increase in safeguarding referrals with 26% having been received in the first half of this year (Jan - Jun).

There doesn't seem to be any reason for this increase in referrals but it may be due to online companies improving their safeguarding abilities in readiness for the internet safety bill so is likely to continue until education/ prevention advice is given to schools, parents and children.

There also appears to be a change in the gender of the children uploading, previously it was predominantly females now there is a pretty even split between the genders overall.

The largest age group for referrals were those aged between 4-7 and 63% of all of the safeguarding referrals were for children who were of primary school age

Please see links below for websites where up to date information can be obtained about internet issues, in-depth details around apps, platforms, etc that children may be using and also guides how to set up accounts safely.

https://nationalonlinesafety.com/

https://www.internetmatters.org/

https://www.internetmatters.org/gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwrranBhAEEiwAzbhNtZnNCFH88gfhUZTeUklTMiOzijn2mNpKldnpb2vcjamrEq38WrhPKBoCA_QQAvD_BwE