Safer Internet Day: the best resources for keeping people safe online

6th February 2024 is the UK’s biggest celebration of online safety, Safer Internet Day. This year the theme is really pertinent in a world of rapid changes to digital technology, with AI changing the way we do things online, often without us even realising! 

‘Inspiring change? Making a difference, managing influence and navigating change online’

There are lots of brilliant resources on the Safer Internet Day website aimed at young people, parents, carers and teachers, including quizzes, videos, worksheets and more.

And the team at Good Things Foundation has hand-picked resources for all ages on a range of internet safety topics. Let us know what you think!

1. Learn My Way – Safety and Security Online

We have eleven topics on online safety available on our free basic digital skills learning platform. This is a great place to start for anyone that is just getting to grips with the online world, and we recommend introducing online safety from an early stage in a learner’s journey. Topics include, keeping devices safe, online behaviours and dealing with scams.

1. Internet Matters – online safety for parents, carers and young people

Our partners at Internet Matters have some beautiful resources on a range of topics, including comprehensive guidance on setting up devices safely (parental controls) and a range of topics that parents need to learn about what their children might come across when online gaming, like this great one on money management that covers in-game purchases and potential scams. They also have resources translated into community language, so check out their website to see what’s available!

1. NewsGuard – Media Literacy and Avoiding Misinformation

How do you know if you can trust what you read online? It’s becoming harder to tell, with so much content online and social media algorithms throwing endless stories into our feeds. NewsGuard has created a great tool that provides trust rating “nutrition labels”  for news and information websites, based on their expert team’s evaluation process. This can help you and the people you support decide how seriously you might take an online article!

If you want to find out more about NewsGuard’s services, visit their website and you can find a code to access one year for free here. 

1. Friends Against Scams

This initiative from the National Training Standards provides training for ScamChampions to raise awareness of how to avoid scams in their communities. They also have easy-read resources that can help you to introduce the topic to people with learning disabilities.

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You can support the Safer Internet Day campaign online by following @safeinternetday on X (Twitter) and using the hashtag #SaferInternetDay and #SID2024.