Praesidio Safeguarding

Six years ago, we founded Praesidio as an online child safeguarding consultancy that believes that every child has a right to be safe online and to thrive in the digital environment. We continue to work across organisations and sectors to promote child safety and wellbeing and we are really proud of the work Praesidio has been doing in this past year.
This has included (but is not limited to!) our groundbreaking work on children’s perspectives on self-generated sexual material online with the excellent WeProtect Global Alliance https://praesidiosafeguarding.co.uk/safe-guarding/uploads/2023/05/WPReportPraesidioSafeguarding.pdf?x70166, and a number of participatory research projects with organisations such as Ofcom and Internet Matters, which we are excited to share soon. We are really enjoying building and supporting the pioneering youth council with TikTok: Announcing the launch of TikTok's Youth Council | TikTok Newsroom and we are also just finishing some fascinating programmes of work piloting new preventative influencer campaigns in West Africa, which we’ll be talking about at Pier2024 later this month.

We’re appreciative that we have an excellent team and brilliant partners in this space. Thank you for all your support. You can read more about our work at www.praesidiosafeguarding.co.uk.

This Autumn term the Youth Participation Officers of the Praesidio team have had the joy of returning to our @‌ofcom and @‌makingsenseofmedia ‘Online Media Literacy’ project. This project aims to develop the digital literacy skills of vulnerable young people in disadvantaged communities. Our Youth Participation Officers Imogen and Charlie have led a Year 7 group in Newport and a Year 8 group in Caerphilly through the the project’s discussions, games and co-creation exercises on a weekly basis this academic term. Each week sees the pupils build on their knowledge gained the week before regarding the design of persuasive technology - including notifications, algorithms, and echo chambers and asks them to think and reflect with us about the affect of these features on their online lives. We have also learned a lot from them as we openly explore the challenges and dilemmas they face online alongside the things they love!


@‌Ofcom

Kerry is our new Global Protection Adviser joining our expert hub. Kerry brings extensive international experience in protection work from her role at Oxfam where she worked as a safeguarding lead implementing protection in a range of development and emergency contexts.

Kerry will be leading on Praesidio’s digital projects in Africa working with NGOs and education services in country. Kerry will also be bringing her background in human rights, safeguarding, and criminal justice to advise on a range of new Praesidio projects. We are very excited to have her join us!

Fascinating findings emerging from our project on sexting resources and education which we are delighted to be running on behalf of Internet Matters. This project seeks to find out from children and young people how best to educate them about the risks of sexting and give them the advice and information they need.

Our first round of focus groups sought to establish what children and young people thought would be most helpful for them to know to encourage them to act protectively. Our results show that there is a big difference in what is deemed to be needed for boys and girls. Boys felt they needed consequence based messaging which was clear and unsensational while girls were looking for ways to recognise and navigate unhealthy behaviours in relationships as well as dealing with pressure to send images. They expressed a desire to be taught about these issues in small, gendered groups to allow for open discussion and questions on the topic in the safe environment of their school.

Additionally, many of the groups said that they were not aware of the resources available to them online if they found themselves in a situation where they needed help.

You can find a link to Internet Matters blog on round 1 and the project page here:
https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/nominet-research-rshe-not-meeting-childrens-needs/
https://www.internetmatters.org/about-us/nominet-research-self-generated-csam/

Welcome to the Praesidio team, Haley Raymond, our newest Research Officer! Haley has recently completed her MSc Sociology degree at The London School of Economics and Political Science, where she utilized interview and survey generated data to investigate the perception and impact of CCTV Surveillance in classrooms across South Korea.

With prior roles as an ESL teacher in Korea and a rowing coach in the U.S., Haley brings hands-on experience in working with children of all ages. Her enthusiasm for child safeguarding projects is evident, and we're thrilled to have her on board!

We are pleased to announce the publication of our parents and carer’s guide for Threads is now available on Hwb as part of our partnership with the Welsh Government! Threads, which is marketed as being the text-based component to Instagram, was developed by parent company Meta. Threads was only released just a few short weeks ago, made large headlines for its explosive growth. As the social media world undergoes a significant shake-up with the rebranding of Twitter to X, the influence of Threads remains to be seen. Threads has already proven to be controversial, notably that Meta’s data gathering policies on Threads have seen it delay its launch in the European Union.

There is particular concern surrounding set up and deletion. Users currently need to use an existing Instagram account to join the Threads platform and are unable to fully delete their own Thread profiles without deleting their Instagram account. This means that those who have joined may feel compelled to stay on the platform and that their Instagram and Threads accounts are indivisibly linked. Whilst Threads was initially released with little features and customisation, it is anticipated that Threads will continue to grow as a potential rival to X (Twitter). The Threads guide joins a growing list of parents and carers guides for the most popular apps in Wales, which includes a wide range of social media and games.

Read our Threads guide here to learn more:

https://hwb.gov.wales/keeping-safe-online/in-the-know/threads/

The Praesidio team are so pleased to be leading a project on behalf of Internet Matters doing much needed research on how best to educate young people on ’sexting’. The project is seeking to find our directly what is effective and likely to enhance healthy, safe and protective behaviours. We’ve been speaking in depth with teachers, parents and pupils across the UK and hearing on whether the current resources and messaging on ‘sexting’ in schools helps to prepare them for the pressures they face. So far, we’ve heard some incredibly balanced and thoughtful responses and reflections on the current offer. We’re also hearing some clear messages - resources need to be direct and non-sensational, delivered to younger children, by those with expertise in the subject - and crucially there is a need for tailored resources for different audiences - recognising the ways the experiences and consequently the educational needs are shaped by gender. We will be continuing the project in the autumn term and look forward to sharing our results soon after.

Internet Matters

We are proud to announce that our parents and carers guide for ChatGPT has been published on Hwb as part of our partnership with the Welsh Government! This guide follows the rapid development and growth of AI and large-language models (LLMs) since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. It should be noted that AI has already been extensively used in technology for quite some time, such as its usage in curating content algorithms across social media platforms. However, AI LLMs are expected to grow in complexity, popular usage, and integration into daily life. We are already seeing AI LLMs being integrated across many apps, such as Snapchat and even Microsoft’s Bing Search engine. The ChatGPT guide joins a growing list of parents and carers guides for the most popular apps in Wales, including a range of social media and games.

Read our ChatGPT guide here https://hwb.gov.wales/keeping-safe-online/in-the-know/chatgpt/

Praesidio are currently half way through a fascinating project working with young people, partnering with Ofcom and MSOM.
This week we’ve been working with a group of young people who seriously LOVE their phones! When asked -what would you do if you had more time? – ‘spend more time on my phone’ they told us.
Today we worked with a group of teenagers – many of whom talked about spending more than 8 hours a day on their phones and had between 600- 900 snapchat streaks.
The purpose of our project is to understand whether teaching children– "to understand persuasive design features" and connecting these to wellbeing and feelings of control (and ability to resist) might improve how they manage their online lives. We have developed a toolkit of resources through games and co-creation activities outside of the classroom to work with young people and offer them additional knowledge and skills. They have told us that they are loving the project and particularly the opportunity to consider how the internet works and why it is designed the way it is. The test will be to see if it makes a positive difference to their online lives in the longer term. Watch this space!! And thanks to Ofcom for letting us run this really fascinating project!
-media-literacy-project

Last week, Praesidio Director, Helen King had the pleasure of being a guest panel member at Ofcom’s online ‘Making Sense of Media’ event. Helen spoke about her experience working with vulnerable and disadvantaged children, and the challenges of reaching some of these children with meaningful media literacy interventions.

We are excited to currently be working with Ofcom on a project exploring and testing online media literacy interventions in deprived areas and helping children identify the impact of persuasive technology. Keep your eyes peeled for updates on our progress with this project.


Ofcom

Our Director Helen King looks forward to joining Ofcom’s ‘Making Sense of Media’ (MSOM) event next week in Exeter, where she will be a guest panel member speaking about media literacy and its importance in children’s development as digital citizens. The MSOM Roadshow sees the Ofcom team travel around the UK across the next month, discussing all things media literacy - including its importance for children, community members, and the influence of gaming and artificial intelligence.

Praesidio Safeguarding are proud to be currently working with Ofcom to launch a project and educational toolkit that explores the role of persuasive technology in young people’s lives, with the aim of building their digital resilience and online media literacy skills.

Ofcom

https://ofcom.eventogy.com/c/makingsenseofmediaroadshow-exeter2/agenda
https://ofcom.eventogy.com/c/makingsenseofmediaroadshow-exeter2/registration

Although the fieldwork for our research was conducted in Ghana, Thailand, and Ireland, there were clear implications for the global response to the issue of ‘self generated’ sexual material. Our recommendations derive from direct suggestions from children we spoke to and are based on their key messages. In our recommendations we have sought to identify the actions that would help to realise the changes that they wanted. Read the recommendations from our report here. https://praesidiosafeguarding.co.uk/reports/ WeProtect