I talked to members of the Lewisham Youth Parliament about sexting and they talked to me about the selfie, they described a selfie as a demonstration of confidence and self-esteem: ‘I look good and in sharing this you will know I look good too’.

The next issue of Digital Education has a focus on e-safety. The quote above comes from a guest article by Penny Patterson, an acknowledged expert in this area.

Online Saafety for Kids, by Intel Free Press http://www.flickr.com/photos/intelfreepress/There is also a guest article by Simon Finch, who writes a lot about digital identity at Digitally Confident. He says:

Before you post a picture of your child ask their permission. As if they are OK with the image or video being shared with the whole world forever.

Interestingly, something both of these articles have in common, even though they were not planned together or written according to a detailed brief, is that to some extent young people and their parents or carers have responsibility too, as far as keeping safe online is concerned -- which, of course, indicates that the "stranger danger" implied by the picture I've chosen to illustrate this article is somewhat misleading.

(However, as I wrote in article I submitted to the Westminster Forum conference about Online Safety, we need to acknowledge that kids can’t assess risk in the same way as adults do because they haven’t fully developed physiologically yet. But we shouldn’t let that become an excuse for not doing anything or teaching rules of online safety.)

All this and more! With Safer Internet Day on the horizon, this is a newsletter you won’t want to miss.

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