This excellent report 'Online safety tools -  a false hope?' is worth a read.

It justified my increasing lamentation when schools tell parents not to worry about the phone use as we can 'pop' on the controls to stop inappropriate content being shared with our children. Unachievable nonsense if you ask me.

I went to a parent talk only yesterday giving this easy breezy reassurance that bears no resemblance to the reality. Maybe I'm getting on a bit, but I really am sick and tired of this.

Report findings: 'We explored the tools on the Google search engine; on Facebook; Instagram; TikTok; Snapchat; YouTube; YouTube Kids; and WhatsApp. Between them they offered 121 tools and it took a total of 7 hours and 18 minutes to activate them all, averaging 79 minutes per platform.'

A healthy discussion is had around 'age-gating' concerns, summarising these concerns to three main areas, 'over-blocking, workarounds and cliff edge at 18.'

It is worth a read. Please comment your views!

Thanks so much everyone for your support.

Becky