Sexperience

Campaign Manifesto

• 90% of children have accidentally viewed online pornography
• The average age for first exposure to pornography is 11
• A third of teenagers say they learn about sex by viewing porn

1. Prepare your child for accidental exposure to pornography. Explain that adults view pornography as some form of ‘fantasy’ rather than reality and that, in truth, porn does not reflect real life, real bodies, or real sex – it distorts them. Encourage your child not to hesitate about coming to you about anything they see online which upsets or disturbs them.
2. Make a real effort to get computer literate if you want to support and understand your kids, you need to have a reasonable understanding of their world
3. Demand information from retailers on adult-content filters whenever you buy a new computer for family use.
4. Ask your internet service provider (ie. BT, Virgin, Tiscali etc) how to switch on the adult-content filters that they already provide.
5. Apply safe-search filtering to search engines (ie. Google, AOL, Yahoo etc) that your family regularly use.
6. Set up different user accounts on home PCs/laptops for every member of the family and activate parental controls on the kid’s accounts.
7. Shop around for software that provides extra adult-content filtering.
8. Keep an eye on your kid’s browsing history – not to censor or spy on them, but to keep them safe online.

ParentsCentre

www.parentscentre.gov.uk/usingcomputersandtheinternet This site directs parents to links and articles on a broad range of topics surrounding internet use and the associated dangers that exist.

Know IT All (KIA)

www.childnet-int.org/kia A Government-funded suite of educational resources from Childnet designed to help educate parents, teachers and young people about safe and positive use of the internet.

Kidsmart

www.kidsmart.org.uk Aimed primarily at parents and people who work with children, this site includes top tips, resources and some "SMART" rules to help teach children how to stay safe online.

Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI)

www.fosi.org FOSI aims to make the online world a safer, better experience for the whole family. The site promotes best practice, tools and methods in the field of online safety.

Thinkuknow

www.thinkuknow.co.uk A set of sites, each aimed at a different audience (children aged 5-16, parents and teachers) with age-appropriate safety tips. Includes a place which young people can use to report experiences where they feel uncomfortable or worried about someone they are in contact with online.

Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)

http://www.iwf.org.uk IWF is the UK Hotline for the public to report child sexual abuse content on the internet. It works with the internet industry and the police in the UK and abroad to get the content removed. You can report on their website, anonymously if you prefer.

All web pages or websites that were accessed in the making of The Sex Education Show which depicted child sexual abuse images were reported to IWF.

Now You Do

http://www.nowyoudo.co.uk A useful, practical collection of links put together by a viewer of The Sex Education Show. Websites range from chatroom safety to cyberbullying, email and lots more.

SafeSearch filtering screens out sites that contain explicit sexual content and deletes them from your search results. SafeSearch claims to eliminate most inappropriate material, though filters are rarely 100 percent accurate.

Although Google, Yahoo and AOL have filters available, by default they only switch them on to moderate filtering. To properly protect your kids you have to switch on strict filtering yourself.

It's fairly easy – by visiting the preferences section of each Search Engine:

Google - http://www.google.com/preferences
Yahoo - http://uk.search.yahoo.com/preferences/preferences
AOL - http://search.aol.com/aol/settings

Your chosen preferences are saved to your computer, but make sure if you use different browsers on the same computer (e.g. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari) that you set up the preferences for each browser separately.

If you do have an account with Google, Yahoo or AOL, it is worth signing in before setting your preferences. This way your preferences are associated with your account ID and can be carried from computer to computer when you sign in. It's worth noting though that if you accidentally log out (easily done, for example with Google Sign Out is top right near the close window button) the strict filtering will be switched off, reverting to the moderate filtering default - so do keep an eye on whether you are properly signed in