Growing Up Digital: Cyber Awareness For Today's Youth

um I I need to be honest first I'm not a parent I found this this journey journey is quite an interesting journey and I want to tell you how it began so I I was uh at Uni I'm still at Uni and I get up at 5:00 in the morning to get the train on time now unfortunately um the uni timings are quite different so by the time I finished I was all waiting for the train Well's trains are fantastic they're always late they're old they're trying to new they're trying to update it all but they they're basically terrible um here lies the problem two carriages 50,000 people trying to get all on them we we got on the train and there's

a problem and the problem is there's a young lad Runing up and down the train being really naughty I can't stress you how much enough I can't stress this enough how painful it is as a non-parent to witness is that we haven't developed your superpower yet we can't turn this off we have to live with that problem the problem was solved the Ultimate Weapon of mass distraction the mother gave gave the child a tablet and he stopped he was no longer this rabbit run up and down the train he was mesmerized by this tablet I thought is this kind of some kind of special app is just this game that I could try and force other parents

to download do a campaign to to make my life easier no I asked them I don't know it's his tablet for me from a non-parent that's a really shocking a shocking tale because how do they not know what's what's the child playing I've done some research a little bit about me I love cows I love I love Forest walks I love my dog is his birthday today um um so if you have any sandwich meats or lettuce he loves lettuce just put in my bag um it's only weird if you make it weird but it's for [Music] him so doing my research I found some interesting facts I didn't believe them at first but double fact checking I put

some references there as well that's an interesting fact for me I'm 32 33 um when we had tablets we didn't have tablets when we was kids we had kna 30 210 brick phones black and white screens with snakes we never had access to the technology the kids have now you see you see that a lot of young kids have their own social media and the first I thought okay that makes sense the parents are building profiles with the kids that kind of stuff post family pictures for people abroad but then when you look at this other statistic which is another fact who is in control of this device well 20% of the three-year-olds is the

three-year-olds that own them I've talked to many people throughout the world through America Nigeria Europe this is not an uncommon thing technology is so readily available to them now they have access to all to they have access to the resources we never could there's another interesting fact as well um this changed around the covid times but it's not changed back so it's here to stay is technology with children a bad thing there's a global demand for Tech roles for cyber roles children now can do things that we never believe I spoke to individual earlier who his child can open this parents phone the child was 3 years old he he admitted he TR helped train him

but that's an that's something to figure out as well we need to get comfortable with technology AI other buzzword they're here to [Music] stay we see ownership escalate around secondary school age but it's still very high in young young young young children from 6y old and it Peaks from to 13year Old there's there's a ginormous wave of technology being added to the child's life brilliant so we're all aware that kids now are getting tablets getting phones they're getting access to the internet they're making their own social media accounts their own game accounts but what's really happening well shockingly Tik tok's On The Rise before before the rise of Tik Tok kids would watch a lot of YouTube

but then make content for Tik Tok you see the global hour hours 100 sorry Global minutes 107 minutes daily globally is the average the the the people and children are on Tik Tok Snapchat's becoming more popular is that a good thing though an app which allows predators to hold information and victims to have no evidence I think not that's my personal opinion on the fall Facebook's on the fall there's been a big push with Instagram trying to claw back young young audience but it's definitely Tik tok's On The Rise so just games and other sites well apps and get sites for example um games is very important I love games I don't know if anyone remembers this game at

all yeah yeah so old school RuneScape everyone knows this it's been around forever um I I loved it I actually learned a lot lot of life lessons from it I recognize how to identify scams for a young age how how how technology works so I learned how Al press alt and F4 would shut a window before I even learn in the real world I learn it through the game learning these interacting with these games and learning about them is very important the skills we learn at a young age can Define what scams we fall for in the future a lot of people still fall for this scam here is it because they didn't learn that lesson

there this is the game of the century for young young children um has anyone heard of this game you heard all the great things about it [Music] right you heard how addicted it is you've heard how much revenue it makes you've heard how it can create an isolating environment for children I'm extremely disgusted at what I just found in the Roblox does the sound go through there oh can hear okay I'm extremely disgusted at what I just found I'm extremely disgusted at what I just found in the Roblox Community I started off in a roleplay server it was accessible from the main Roblox application didn't say anything about an age restriction after joining that roleplay

server I received a direct message that told me to join this chat application they say they do not allow anyone under the age of 18 to be in the server the main Roblox application doesn't allow you to speak this way but when you join these private communities you can see horrible things like this here's another very strange server that's accessible directly from the Roblox homepage if you were unaware like I was about these sub communities that exist within a children's application or Roblox condos um I would look further into it ask your children if they know what it is and they need to know that it's okay in my opinion to tell you that uh stuff

like this is happening um so stay safe and if you have any questions leave them in the comments so before we had a digital world where everyone can see what you was up to live RuneScape you had different servers you you could ping your friends you had moderators run around the community but now there's games where it almost encourages people to make make their own worlds within them is there enough moderator for every world if things like this can happen that's that's a problem we've talk we we we're going to talk about a lot of problems we all know about cyber bullying we know about online preators we know about privacy problems we know about digital digital footprint putting

information out of the world that's forever there we hear about radicalization every so often with Andrew the likes of Andrew tapate do we hear about inop inappropriate content I don't know if you remember but when you buy a game there's actually age age requirements on the game that's often quite ignored um this is an interesting one that's been IGN

not he's very good potential well [ __ ] so what why is a three year old playing a game meant for 18 plus year olds I mean it's easy to blame the parents um but do we look at the titles now do we look at AJ when I was growing up I was playing gra of Auto San Andreas when I was 8 years old or something like that privacy we hear all about privacy um we hear about a lot of these big companies getting sued do we hear about what the children are thinking though 50% of the children are saying that parents should ask permission before they put photos and documents online um can I parents you don't have

to raise your hand your silence be enough do you ask your children every time you post a picture of them yeah brilliant unfortunately you're are one of the very few there's um there's a darker side we need to talk about um I don't actually want to talk about it though but um we should we should know about it

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I get this

[Music] it's easy to talk about figures and statistics but what we do really does matter we we we're giving these kids access to all these tools at early age we're open in the world where they can communicate whenever they want are are we talking about cyber security awareness are we helping them anyway so a lot of parents I talk to from America are saying oh they're learning in school got friends in Nigeria saying they're learning in school England yeah they're learning in school uh they're not learning in school to understand how to solve the problem we need to break it down time and money in terms of time for curriculum there's very little dedicated to cyber

security or it or Computing in general it ranges from school to school it can be an average of 2 hours a fortnite when we talk about security I'm talking about it and when I'm talking about it I talk about they're teaching them how to make PowerPoint presentations they're teaching them a password should be eight characters long or our data stuff we we like to talk in the world that in the digital world sorry in cyers screen specific that we we need need to keep updated curriculums take a very long time to update there's an echo chamber where people making decisions don't necessarily get all all the answers and all the solutions money is an important

one I spoke to a school two weeks ago with the Cyber first their equipment is 10 years old their laptops their computers are 10 years old um we we I don't want to go to the political reasons but we can kind of understand why when we look at that fact statistics there's not enough there's not enough money in being invested in the young age the youth sorry the workforce there's not enough skilled teachers to talk about cyber security with kids um another another conversation I had the other day was p a PE teacher saying that he's among one of 35 PE teachers I spoke to one of my friend he he's doing a computer science uh PCG

he's two so 35 PE teachers two science teachers it could be the the money um let's be honest there's there's a high paying cyber security roles that 6 fig plus being advertised around the world boot camps this boot camps this teaching uh what do you what do you have to deal with you have to deal with AB I was an ex- teacher you have to deal with abusive abusive children abusive parents you have to deal with the politics of in the office um that's a really hard world to deal with you want to expire kids you want to help them but the work force stops you doing that parents is it right to assume that the

kids are learning everything at school there is an argument to that I mean we learn about cell membranes we learn about red blood cells we learn about one add one is to um so why we not why would why would a parent not assume they learn about cyber security in school again when I was a kid I was told we never have a car around a calculator in our entire life we'd never have any any tools like this we'd have to learn long division we have to showy our workings out uh yeah they're a little bit wrong there there's um there's a lot of problems money is one of the biggest factors having having having people being aware of the

problem is a big factor much like cyber security attacks you don't want to advertise there's a problem uh the government does doesn't want to advertise there's a problem that they're not going to they're not going to shout out to the world that we don't have enough teaching staff we don't pay enough um we don't offer the schools enough support we don't they don't they don't advertise the budget cuts but there are solutions and there are some really really good Solutions the laws are changing uh this is really recent one actually um making sure that your social media providers remove bad content and what I mean by that what I mean but revenge porn um uh radicalization material

topl less nudity um it's all it's all the blames being now moved on to the service providers the Facebooks the twitters which is a good move um there are a lot of problems with that there's privacy issues involved there's a freedom of expression should you be able to see everything you want to see online there's an argument and I do understand staff are UPAC now there are schemes not just in Ling around the world for upskilling it could be prompted by a hack from a student that's that's got media inent and realize there's an issue with cyber security in schools it could be local your local Innovation Hub giving um upskilling teachers office for cyber

security the kids are learning as well they're not having to rely so much on school anymore there's organizations that come into school there's websites that be made to offer training solutions for children that can't have access to the education in school as well so that's that's something nice to think about um the next one is what I'm really really passionate about and the main reason I wanted to talk why I'm here being part of the [Music] solution there's so many skill skilled professionals out there in the world that don't realize the problem and I just wanted to highlight highlight to you all that this is a problem but you can't do something about [Music] it you can sign up through local schemes

like the stem learning advisors where they will pay for your DBS they will give you the money to do all the checks for you they will put you in a network where you can go to school and volunteer your time all free doesn't cost you anything you can't claim it back you have the um the Cyber fi love lovely lovely bunch of people um I work with them myself that are trying to encourage more diverse Talent into the world of cyber security making girls only competitions again it doesn't solve the problem the more people are aware of of cyber security the more girls are aware of cyber security the less victims we aware um Custer there might be some someone in

your local cyber cluster trying to do something about it organizing volunteer Works organizing training schemes to upskill people find your local community there might be someone in your local community or online or whatever that's doing something to be part of the solution you can be involved in that um be the bucket if the world's on fire be the bucket sorry that's one

um I didn't anyone has any questions or they wanted to talk outside and whatever's easiest yeah pal hi my name is Ian I'm a computer science teacher I've come here today to try and see a bit more about the world of cyber security um I have qualifications in science which is unusual te correct I don't have qualification in cyber security or expertise in cyber security so um the very final part of your slides you saying about brist bath cluster yeah is that the best forum for me to reach people like these wonderful people to get ideas about how to engage with them my students I've got students up to the age of 18 it's brist on B

right do you live in the local area sorry e so I'll collect you later on with um the Cyber first team I don't you have them come into your school no we have done cyber first a few years ago yeah so keep up with them uh in terms of uh clusters and communities there's so much power of who you know um you might have someone that's really interested or has someone working on groundbreaking uh subjects they want to share with your students and we really do need to do a better job at aspiring students there's there is a problem with cyber security training and the fact that it is very boring I was given um I'm not going to

name name any names I was given a template to to go to score and deliver training session and it's on cryptography um you're you're computer science teacher I can't stand maths I'm terrible at maths I hate maths you don't have to be good at math to be good at cyber security so I made a little lock picking class um demonstrating dexterity patience and perseverance they're all skills that are need in cyber security um you say you're not an expert in cyber security and you have no formal cyber security training you kind of know that you don't have to be an expert to help though I'm not an expert I'm a full-time student and I Vol volunteer my time

because if some something is better than nothing thanks thanks for your question there thanks your first of all awesome talk I think you really do have a room full of people there that be happy Come schools people I want to ask about your thoughts on currently at the moment a on um so yeah there's there youer to the SI on the WhatsApp groups so yeah this this are the balance we have to have though this planned I should have asked a question before and like like hello sir um I've gone past it already privacy so that is a double bladed sword we do need to we have there is a balance in act I have 100% um a sounds cringe

support encryption I think everyone should have an access to privacy I don't think you should weaponize though I don't think that the likes of Snapchat where um someone can be tricked into sending a new picture for example and the Prejudice are able to save that evidence but then the victim has no evidence that they been sent or they've been tricked and that person can get away with that so I think it's a very it's a very hard it's a very difficult question to answer but I think we need to we need to appreciate the security and the privacy of all the individuals but we do need accountability and that's the problem with encryption you kind of

remove a bit of accountability you get gain privacy but you lose accountability um that's my own opinion I've done no research in that but yeah thanks for question though any others or so I've got uh children still clear devices there's going to have to be a point in their you development they getting these devices um not s suggested talk there is the right answer when's the right time to start letting them pay on devices when's the right time to to step back and allow them to you know that's an excellent question and I do want to I do want to approach that in my slides but I love love to answer your question it depends I know it's a stupid answer it

does depend if you withheld the withheld the device they are going to be left behind unfortunately in the Digital World um there are so much Fantastic Tools out there the the technology can be used for wonderful stuff you'll notice when I talked about the um the trends I didn't mention uh I didn't mention about the um the educational apps cuz they're not trended unfortunately um so I'm not saying the technology is being misused but it's not being encouraged in the way it's they could as a parent though there are lot of benefits for the children having access to this technology it can help them the homework I'm really dyslexic and I I need grammar I need spell

Checkers to to make sure that I've not made a mistake there's probably a million in here but I try to be kind of authentic with my issues you can try and control them by setting parential guidance on them but there are there's ways around that iPhones for example you can put a parent lock on it the kids are really smart though they're the future hackers they're the future cyber Security leaders they are they are the change makers so what are they doing they're turning on screen recording before they give you the phone so they're recording the the pass phrase before they give you the phone they're changing the times on the phone so example you put a power

lock so after 6:00 p.m. it can't be um it can't be used they change the time to 4:00 little bypasses like that these these kids are ingenius when I was um doing my presentation about the lock picking there was like all these wonderful girls just like fing out straight away not giving up not giving up not giving up there's so much perseverance with the youth that any measure you put on them by rather than just watching them is not going to be enough if they if there is a way they will find it they are the future hackers I I would I would stress that as a parent you you you talk to them about

the risks the risks and the reward it's a very it's a very cyber security question is risk management let them know that they can they can use this for good but bad thing they do open the world to bad things and it's not just from a Prejudice other students as well um some of the nastiest people in the world are our children well don't can we delete that it's true they can be the the nastiest people in the world and you have sorry questions I'm a par of 9 years old and and he was

techology Tey for the I Lear new things Technic stuff how can when I other parents afraid like scared your son you techology but instead of blocking yeah so how do you how can you talk with those parents because I tried I did some cyber security certification my son want to stay there and listen to the video he's 9 years old he's learning something yeah his teacher who because he this show say no your par your is wrong so how can we talk to other parents to encourage them to let the kids use the technology and the devices they they are scared but instead of the problem take these take these tablets so they're good but I don't want to know

what um much like the woman on the train I imagine I don't know it's his tablet um how visual talk started I think it's easy to bury a hand head in an ostrich it's a really complex problem um cyber security leaders leaders now still can't solve this problem we um the media is very good at scaring people though we he all the bad stuff and ially quite a lot of the bad stuff we don't hear about the kids using Minecraft to program computers building computers within a game we don't hear about that at all um we don't use them like kids building their own apps starting their own companies we don't hear about that just as much as the

negatives it's it's a tricky question um you're doing a really good job though you're leading by example encouraging your son to use technology in a good way if we start hearing more stories like that if there's a good positive change the other parents might follow suit but again like the other gentlemen over there it's perfectly understandable to restrict the technology to the child is okay but he has a tablet and a laptop parents control DNS Fe and then we approach that with the the Privacy when would you read your trials diary no would you put a tracking up tracking app in your child's phone uh guess bit gray there doesn't

it

they find ways around that though yeah so did you have

questions time I would say that the best way of dealing with a child that's you got if you in a physical you you can't look off this B yeah they're going to walk around it if they want to yeah if you talk to them and you know say what you doing you know you got to you know if you encourage them not to walk around the to be about you need to talk to them and encourage to open what they're doing when they Compu and how they're doing they're going to keep secrets for that's how the children work but if they get scared and they come to you you say you know they get scammed the first I can

talk to my parents about what going on you can reassure them they need to talk to you about what they're doing online you need to talk to them about what doing and you need to not be ashamed of we need to get next with cuz you sound like a future teaching my friend so so you had a question yes in the kind of an extreme case extreme examples the threat actor that was able to compromise Microsoft Rockstar who actually was born in Oxford a teenager 17 yeah how what sort of recourse would parents take when a child is more skilled than them their teachers even police even Microsoft sort of actions parent do when they know

the what one one thing I did want to put on my slide CU it kind of contradiction being recorded so I'm going to make itself look good was uh that there are some statistics where the uh no no offense where the school school kids know more about cyber security than the teachers um it's common Trend now um this there's lots of cybercity in films that make it very sexy very glamorous they don't realize that they may be St on a computer looking at logs for 8 hours um in terms of ramif the r was it the ramification side of things you want to focus on well yeah what what sort of if your parents that

child there's pretty much nothing they do let get into trouble and get arrested just so determined and so skill that's right exactly um FR actors are getting younger and younger uh we we we do see that Trend um mainly because the information is more accessible out there the the the main issue with that is do the parents know what the the child's getting up to can again I didn't want to include it because it's quite cringe there was a there was a cyber security poster by the police saying ah if you have these these icons I don't anyone seen that have these icons on your computer your son's or daughter's computer to they you brows

yeah if there's Cali Linux picture um so there they are aware of the problem so the government are aware of the problem again there's not much we can do about it if a kid wants to do it they want to do it is it good to for would you not do it though would you not do it if you could get away with a crime earn millions of pounds potentially and face no dry J time because you're just underage and hide in some bit Locker around the world

[Music] oh they yeah exactly cyber security is so transferable it's if they're going to commit the crime they're going to the crime it's ethics and um it's not for his talk the par that have the experience of in life how how to do you know the right teach the right parents one of the things I think just follow off the guy over there I think that case really went the wrong way in the end because the parents when we got sort of uh CAU by the police the first time and it was under they couldn't parents didn't really step in and do anything and I think he's now serving a couple years prison sentence couple years later check doing things

it's like team there sorry I think just to follow on exactly to that I think it's because people you're right in media cyber security is very sexy a lot of the times you're seeing hacking and I'm putting that very much in quotes in TV and it's and it's there's always another crime that goes with it if you're watching Law and Order it's never just a hacker it's like a hacker who is like blown up three minuts I think the problem with your example is is that the consequences don't seem real I'm taught not to steal a car because no matter what age I am I understand that that's going to put me if I'm talk in

front of a police officer and possibly going to jail cyber because it's online it's that more Anonymous so I don't think parents know how to actually put severity on the crime and make people understand that if you are doing it at 16 and 17 Stu a ation and they will make that case until you turn 218 to prosecute you adult I know it's happened there's a few cases of that so I think it's an education piece but also from the parents how do you scare the you know Jesus out of your kids for doing the wrong thing o that deliberate if they can get away with that in that if they can get away with that in the

digital world and face no consequences in game scamming um and then some GP as we like to call in the industry uh why would they not do the same learn a bit of hacking and rip around somewhere and buy a car uh they got away with it there they got away of it in the in the real world as well um it's if you you look at the statistics C cry uh it's really attractive industry because they get away with their lot there par with chop and if you good at chop you become deep you're good at Cy security you can take it make it legal it true so why not encourage the child to use their abilities for goods

and make a ridiculous amount of money later well and I'm with you 100% that's why I taught a room of a year eight girls how to lockpick I don't want to teach them about that they can break into something I want to talk teach them that the skills they're learning the skills they know the skills they possess can be used for good and we need to encourage that we need to we need ambassadors we need volunteers go to the schools and and show te show these kids that they can earn a good wage they can they can feel good about themselves at end of the day and they can progress in their careers they don't have to go down

the black hat route hello I was way of the kid is with with or a not necessarily like the level of laes but they did some sh down with packing why not um maybe what one thing we need to be doing is do better advertising things like ctfs and own competitions and things and the things that legitimize those skills and provide an Avenue of saying like hey these skills can be used for a good but benefit and show an opportunity of employment and ways that these are actually not that's a great mindset to have we to have a chat CU you need to get that mindset into the classroom I do that we we need to copy you and put you

in 10 minute in classrooms then um that's the kind of message the ultimate message of this really is that um cyber security is is is a is not black and white world there's there's lots of Grays and that there's no lead there's there's no role models for these there's I don't know a female cyber security hacker and role model unfortunately um they need to be there need to be more of them and they need to be engaging with the the children they need to be showing them right for wrong because the parents don't have the knowledge um the schools don't have the time and there's no one to teach it [Music]

it's examples examples so um okay Israel is very good Israel teaches kids cyber security were very very young age um that's why they're so prominent they encourage um capture the flags they encourage learning they encourage attacking they encourage uh competitions from a very young age I'm not saying we should all go and copy what Israel is doing but but there are aspects where they're doing really well um I do find it quite weird though and know this is always puzzled me uh you see these happiness indexes around the world like Norway is the most happy in this and this country is the best at this but no one wants to copy anyone else everyone wants to reent the wheel and we're not

doing we not doing a good enough job um there are so Al equival one is like the uh the um cyber first scheme and we got the um so uh young young women can get beries to get into cyber security training that's that's brilliant that's that's a that's a brilliant place to start we need to dve above and beyond so to answer your question in a noncl way that other countries doing a really good job um but we're not one of [Music] them listen listen when when you're an old man right and and the robots deciding what tube to put in wear you want to make sure that there's a good cyber secur Workforce good all right awesome thank

you