Safeguarding issues will rise as social media loosens its restrictions
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Safeguarding issues will rise as social media loosens its restrictions
When Mark Zuckerberg decided to rid Meta - owner of Facebook and Instagram - of fact checkers earlier this month, he was likely thinking more about political positioning with an incoming Trump presidency than he was about young people sat in their bedrooms on their phones.
And when X refused to take down a violent video cited in the case of Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three girls in Southport last year, the social media platform was likely thinking more about upholding an ideological position on freedom of speech rather than its potential impact on vulnerable teenagers.
Despite attempts to push back against big tech firms - particularly US-based social media companies - the trend is clear: the online world is going to become more hostile, more misleading and more dangerous for young people.
Social media and schools
This suggests that the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) - designed to hold social media companies to account for their content - is not central to the thinking of big tech firms, and calls into question the sincerity of some of the big social platforms that recently signed up to do more to tackle hate speech.
For teachers, this means safeguarding is undoubtedly going to get harder in schools. We will likely see more statistics like those identified by my colleague Dan Worth in his investigation into the rise in primary phase suspensions for racism.
Children will likely be exposed to more violence, more disinformation, more bullying and, potentially, be rewarded on social media for mimicking or spreading that disinformation, bullying or violence.
Annual safeguarding checks
This comes at the same time as Labour is planning to introduce annual safeguarding checks, and longer inspection insights for safeguarding are set to be proposed as part of the new Ofsted framework.
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Suggesting, in response to these fears about the influence of social media, that schools need to take safeguarding really seriously is a bit like saying they need to teach children: they already do take it really seriously.
And telling schools to throw more resource at the issue is also rather pointless: the money isn’t there to hire extra staff to deal with the potential increase is safeguarding problems.
Safeguarding questions for schools
But forewarned is forearmed, and clearly talking as a senior leadership team about the fact that the problems are likely to increase at the same time as accountability is set to increase is going to be essential.
How robust is your safeguarding training? How much support are you offering staff? How might that support need to be ramped up? What is your plan to deal with growing demand? What is your plan for more accountability? How well have those plans been communicated to staff? Who is leading on this and monitoring changes over time? What external sources of support exist for the school?
The next 12 months and beyond could see vulnerable young people more exposed to online dangers than they have perhaps ever been before - and it will, in most cases, be schools dealing with the fallout of that.
Jon Severs is editor at Tes
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