It's Virtually Christmas!
It’s that time of year when our thoughts turn towards Christmas. Love it or hate it, the festive season is coming, so let’s make the most of it.
There’s a good chance that you’ve already started making a Christmas gift list for friends and loved ones. If you’re buying presents for children, you might be considering purchasing the latest gadget - last year, parents spent an astonishing £3 billion on tech gadgets for their kids at Christmas and that’s set to rise even more in 2015. Wow-ee.
If you’re anything like us, you often worry about how your children are using technology, whether that’s how much time they are staring at a screen, or the sort of information they are sharing online. It is these concerns that led us to publishing Virtually Me - your manifesto for online life.
Virtually Me, although aimed at children and young teenagers, is just as much for parents and grandparents. We hope it offers you greater peace of mind that your youngsters can become more savvy when it comes to using the internet and social media. If you buy a young person a gadget without having a conversation about what’s OK (and what’s not OK) for them to share online, there may be cause for regret later!
Dubbed the ‘first internet self-help book for children’, Virtually Me is about more than that. It’s about arming young people with the power to make the right choices about what they get up to online. Let’s face it, how many 13-year-olds do you know that listen to their parents? But if they are the ones committing to their online activity, they are much more likely to stick to it and think twice about posting something that they might regret later on.
And don’t worry, the book doesn’t list the dos and don’ts of using the internet (we have teenage children and know that wouldn’t get us very far!), instead it encourages young readers to reach their own conclusions. Packed-full of interesting and fun activities, Virtually Me encourages its readers to be in charge of their online life.
As much as we love the internet and the buzz of social media, there’s no escaping the fact it has a down (and often dark) side. With a consistent rise in cyber bullying and sexting, it’s more important than ever that young people understand what is appropriate - or not - to share online.
So if you’re buying a teenager the latest tech this Christmas, how about slipping a copy of Virtually Me into their stocking too?
There’s a good chance that you’ve already started making a Christmas gift list for friends and loved ones. If you’re buying presents for children, you might be considering purchasing the latest gadget - last year, parents spent an astonishing £3 billion on tech gadgets for their kids at Christmas and that’s set to rise even more in 2015. Wow-ee.
If you’re anything like us, you often worry about how your children are using technology, whether that’s how much time they are staring at a screen, or the sort of information they are sharing online. It is these concerns that led us to publishing Virtually Me - your manifesto for online life.
Virtually Me, although aimed at children and young teenagers, is just as much for parents and grandparents. We hope it offers you greater peace of mind that your youngsters can become more savvy when it comes to using the internet and social media. If you buy a young person a gadget without having a conversation about what’s OK (and what’s not OK) for them to share online, there may be cause for regret later!
Dubbed the ‘first internet self-help book for children’, Virtually Me is about more than that. It’s about arming young people with the power to make the right choices about what they get up to online. Let’s face it, how many 13-year-olds do you know that listen to their parents? But if they are the ones committing to their online activity, they are much more likely to stick to it and think twice about posting something that they might regret later on.
And don’t worry, the book doesn’t list the dos and don’ts of using the internet (we have teenage children and know that wouldn’t get us very far!), instead it encourages young readers to reach their own conclusions. Packed-full of interesting and fun activities, Virtually Me encourages its readers to be in charge of their online life.
As much as we love the internet and the buzz of social media, there’s no escaping the fact it has a down (and often dark) side. With a consistent rise in cyber bullying and sexting, it’s more important than ever that young people understand what is appropriate - or not - to share online.
So if you’re buying a teenager the latest tech this Christmas, how about slipping a copy of Virtually Me into their stocking too?
