Special update - Please monitor your child's online behaviour
Kia ora e te whānau
It has been drawn to our attention today that some of our children are talking about the "Momo Challenge" that has been circulating on social media for a number of months, and is trending again in NZ.
You can read about it on this link from the NZ Herald today.
We are being very vigilant at school and are monitoring our network very closely to identify if children are searching for this to find out about it. At this stage, unless we know about specific children talking about it, we are not going to discuss this specifically with the children as we think that most of them are not aware of it and we do not want to increase their curiosity about it and start additional searching.
Whilst we do not believe that this poses an 'actual threat' to our children, we are very concerned that it has the potential to cause some of our children extreme worry, anxiety and loss of sleep, and that this behaviour can become quite contagious when children talk about it together.
We very strongly urge you to check in with your child(ren) and regularly monitor their social media and internet usage. As parents, we need to be having regular discussions with our children about safe behaviour on the internet and social media, and talking with them about stuff that we know is circulating. When we have these conversations and explain to them what our responses are, we model to them how they can respond and help them to become astute at identifying 'rubbish' on the internet.
We will continue having ongoing, safety and cyber-citizenship discussions with the children to continue to develop their awareness and competency in safe use of the internet.
Keeping our young children safe in their use of digital environments is a partnership that we are in with you. We each need to stay aware of what our children are engaging in, and having important conversations with them when we have concerns or wonderings about their safety.
Please do let your child's teacher know if you have any concerns or want to discuss anything around cybersafety. We were alerted to this information today by a parent and we appreciate the importance of keeping one another 'in the loop' about these issues as they arise.