Building Young People's Digital Literacy Skills

Online spaces can pose risks for children and young people. Talking together about how to stay safer and where to get help if something goes wrong is a great strategy to build children’s digital literacy and online safety skills in the lead up to age 16. See eSafety's page for social media restrictions and your family.

Reporting when something goes wrong online

If your child experiences something harmful online such as cyberbullying or illegal and restricted content, you can report it directly to the platform, game, app or website where the incident occurred.

Young people will need the support of an adult to report. eSafety advises taking the following steps:

1. Collect evidence before reporting to the platform or taking other action. If the issue is ongoing, make sure you collect web page address (URL), user profile names, screenshots showing what has been happening and for how long.

2. Report to the platform

• Harmful posts, comments, messages and profiles should be reported to the online platform or service first – many of these links are listed in The eSafety Guide. If the service doesn’t help report it to eSafety.

• Sharing or threatening to share an image or video of a person without their consent can be reported to eSafety immediately.

Stop contact: Let your child know they can mute the other account, tighten their security settings and prevent content from being shared further.

Get support: Explore eSafety's advice pages for parents and carers about how to help your child if they are dealing with issues.

Georgia Despotellis and Labreni Pappas

Wellbeing Leaders