Online Gaming 

Online games can be great fun for your child, but make sure you can help them manage the risks.

Many games can improve your child’s coordination, problem-solving and multi-tasking skills, as well as help build social skills through online interactivity with other players. But it is also important to understand what might go wrong and have a negative impact on your child. 

Recently, it has come to our attention that some of our students have been spending an increasing amount of time engaging in online gaming and social media. We have become aware of some inappropriate and unkind communication between students while online at home, and some concerning incidents, such as children waking up at 4am for an online game to release new material, not going back to sleep and falling asleep in class the next day.

Research has found that when it comes to our children and online safety, there is a strange disconnect between our worries about letting them go into cyber-space and the way in which we monitor them while they are there.

Some interesting statistics…

81% of children aged 8 to 17 have played an online game

64% have played a multiplayer online game with others

52% have played with people they did not know

17% have experienced bullying or abuse while playing a network game with others

34% have made an in-game purchase and this rose to 45% when they played a network game with others

Some links for parents and carers on the safety website (link below):

• How to create a safer gaming environment for your child
• Is your child spending too much time gaming?
• Grooming and bullying through in-game chat
• Limiting in-game purchases
• Games with gambling themes

Please follow the link to the esafety website for support for parents in managing children’s online behaviour: https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents

Helen Libro and Kylie Billett

Acting Assistant Principals