Health – our ability to monitor it, and motivation to improve it – is a major selling point for smartwatches. A recent survey found, for example, that smartwatch owners tend to exercise at least one day more every week than people who don’t have a smartwatch. It’s unlikely that the device causes this increase, but it almost unquestionably encourages the additional workouts.

Factor in the facility to store potentially life-saving medical information and to contact emergency services instantly, and it’s clear that smartwatches have plenty to recommend them. As our #WakeUpWednesday guide discovers, however, possible hazards including hidden costs and night-time use interfering with sleep mean that it’s not universally good news for parents.

Read on to access your free guide…National Online Safety

In an age where empathy and understanding are more valuable than ever, apps like Wizz – which connect users with potential new friends – can be incredibly welcome. Pairing people with others who share their interests, the app can unite mutual fans of the same music, find fellow foodies to exchange recipes with or recruit new players for someone’s favourite online game.

Indeed, the app’s tagline promises to “expand your world”. Is that expansion totally safe, however? As this week’s #WakeUpWednesday guide finds out, Wizz’s age verification system isn’t infallible – so, with the possibility of young people being matched with much older users, trusted adults might want to familiarise themselves with how this trending app actually works.

Read on to access your free guide…National Online Safety

Did you know that a fifth of 3- and 4-year-olds in the UK have their own mobile phone? Or that one in five of the 8- to 17-year-olds who play online games chat to people they don’t know while they’re gaming? Those are just two of the surprising (and, for many, disconcerting) statistics highlighted by Ofcom’s recently published ‘Media Use and Attitudes’ report.

It’s well worth a read, but weighing in at 50 pages of fairly densely packed data, we appreciate that it’s the sort of thing parents and teachers might not always have time for. So our #WakeUpWednesday guide this week is an at-a-glance breakdown of some of the report’s headline findings, from device usage to online spending habits.

Read on to access your free guide…National Online Safety

With smartphones, tablets, laptops and games consoles now the norm, it’s no surprise to learn that almost nine out of ten (89%, to be exact) 10 to 15-year-olds in the UK go online every day. What’s perhaps less expected, though, is that more than one in four (27%) say their parents or carers don’t talk to them much – or, in fact, at all – about what they actually do in the digital world.

This leaves many children feeling like they lack a source of emotional support if something online is causing them stress. As today’s #WakeUpWednesday guide discovers, maintaining a regular avenue of communication about our digital lives is just one step that trusted adults can take to help children feel more in control of how – and when – they use internet-enabled devices.

Read on to access your free guide…National Online Safety

In 2022, Microsoft’s Digital Defence Report estimated that cyber criminals made more than 900 attempts to hack passwords every single second – and warned that the number was on the rise. Only around a tenth of those were successful, but the business magazine Inc. nevertheless reported approximately eight million passwords being stolen each day globally. Concerning, isn’t it?

Thankfully, there are plenty of steps we can take to make our valuable data less accessible to prying eyes. As well as recommending password management software and multi-factor authentication, our #WakeUpWednesday guide also suggests some even easier ways to come up with different passwords that are simple to remember – but difficult to guess.

Read on to access your free guide and catch up on the latest online safety news…National Online Safety