Digital Champions

We currently have eight Digital Champions who underwent an application process to be selected as our youth representative board. The Digital Champions help the Childnet Digital Leaders team to ensure that the programme is youth led. They represent a youth voice which is essential to the programme’s success and support us with module development, content creation, events and consultation, as well as representing the programme in the wider online safety community.

In July of 2023, Digital Leaders from the primary and secondary programmes submitted questions for the Digital Champions to answer about the role they play and about online safety in general. Watch the video below to see how they responded!

Click on the photos below to learn more about our inspiring Digital Champions!

Cosima

Cosima

What I like doing best online:

At the moment, my favourite thing to do online is follow the global political landscape! This year is one of the biggest years for democracy in the world with over 70 elections; as a politics student my entire For You page basically revolves around the news and different people’s perspectives, so I like to use my time online to become as informed as possible without having to watch longform updates like the broadcast media!

What I like doing offline:

Offline, I am a prefect in my school’s marketing and PR department, so I spend a lot of my time running around our campus keeping up to date with different activities and creating content for our social channels. For me, editing is really relaxing and I get to use my knowledge of the online landscape as a Digital Champion in a proactive way!

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

As a Digital Champion of over five years now, I have achieved quite a lot – from contributing to policy discussions to creating resources to educating my fellow young people on the online world. However, moving forward I would really like to work on helping to action the various aspects of the online safety bill and internet governance as well as spreading awareness of the various issues associated with the developing online world on a wider scale.

My top online safety tip:

When coming across posts surrounding social causes such as updates, always double-check the information mentioned on a secondary non-social media source before reposting to prevent the spread of misinformation!

Dominik

Dominik

What I like doing best online:

I like gaming online.

What I like doing offline:

Offline, I like travelling.

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

In Digital Champions, I hope to achieve safety online and to help companies build their security software to higher demand.

My top online safety tip:

My safety tip is to ignore other people who talk with you online and talk to your friends that you know in real life.

Eimear

Eimear

What I like doing best online?

I enjoy watching different movies and tv shows and I enjoy watching Brooklyn 99 another thing I like  doing is playing music on deezer  and YouTube music. I also know how to crochet so I like looking up different ideas on patterns.

What I like doing offline?

I enjoy playing Gaelic football, crocheting and am a volunteer for my local youth club with that I was recently appointed chairperson of the youth board and I also enjoy being outdoors as it is calming.

What would I like to achieve as a digital champion?

I would love to help bring new ideas of ways we can improve the website and be able to teach other people about internet safety.

My top online safety tip?

Well my top online safety tip is for example, on Instagram don’t add back people you don’t know .

Gabrielle

Gabrielle

What I like doing best online:

I like to watch shows and movies on online streaming services, my favourite is the Disney+ TV show Criminal Minds. I often watch musicals with my friends, my favourites are Hamilton and Hairspray. I spend most of my time listening to music on Spotify, in this year’s Spotify Wrapped it was shown I had spent 72,900 minutes listening to music on Spotify! You will often find me listening to artists such as Queen, TV Girl, Lana Del Rey, Paris Paloma, and my all-time favourites The Smiths. My favourite song is Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths. I love that song so much and you will often see me listening to it!

What I like doing offline:

While offline I like to participate in my school’s theatre productions and workshops, when I’m not in shows I’m watching them, I often visit my local theatre and watch plays and musicals with my friends and family. I also love to play music; I can play viola and violin and I’m in my school’s orchestra and string quartet. I’m the most confident in my viola and I’m the only viola player in my school so I’m often busy with lessons, exams, and orchestra. My favourite thing to do with my viola is to play duets with my best friend who plays piano, we often play together for fun!

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

I hope to educate as many people as possible on the advantages and disadvantages of the online world. I hope to help keep as many people as possible safe online by educating them and sharing information with them. I also hope to inspire future digital leaders and possible future digital champions and also spread information and stories of women in tech and help motivate young people to get into tech and computing without worry and be able to have the opportunities to do so.

My top online safety tip:

My top tip for staying safe online is to not share anything that you wouldn’t want out on the internet forever. Always remember that once things are posted online or shared online it is near impossible to fully erase from the internet. Digital footprints are very real and can affect you years from now. For example, you could lose your job because of something you posted years ago. Even if you meant it as a joke or didn’t mean it, it is still out there and can come back up to bite you years later.

Jack

Jack

What I like doing best online:

Normally, I’d like to do gaming with my friends, but if they aren’t online, then I’d either do something offline or I’d play a single player game. I’d also do something like listening to music or watching videos.

What I like doing best offline:

Depending on the situation, I would see if the range down at my archery club is available, do some Lego MOCs (My Own Creations) or see if I can help around my house.

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

I hope to help bring a range of ideas for the Digital Leader programme, as well as bringing information to companies, to better help them with online safety.

My top online safety tip:

Don’t use the same password for everything. It might be easy for you, but it’s also easy if someone was trying to get on any of your accounts without permission.

Jayden

Jayden

What I like doing best online:

Online, I love listening to music on my phone. It helps me to de-stress, especially after a long day at school! I like researching information about past gaming consoles and the evolution of computers, and I am good at designing PowerPoints. If I had to pick one app to keep in my life, it would almost certainly be PowerPoint as the possibilities are endless and you can create cool animations, where objects move around a page, to engage listeners and make information stand out. I watch videos online to achieve new goals and learn new things, which help me develop as a person!

What I like doing offline:

At school, I am a part of the Tech Team, working in various places to ensure quality and immersion in all areas, such as in productions at a local professional-grade theatre, sound and lighting in our newly-built Performance Space, and setting up and using PA systems, alongside many other technical roles. I am also a Peer Mentor, which involves me going to a form group of younger children in the school with two other Peer Mentors, where we are the support for the form tutor and a friendly face for the younger new entrants to the school.

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

My goals as a Digital Champion with Childnet are to educate myself on Online Safety to an extent where I am able to confidently assist with teaching many people: this is not just other children, but advise adults and important individuals on how us young people feel on certain situations, and how we would want a scenario to be handled or amended to represent us in a positive light, not just in front of one business, but on a wider scale, both nationally and internationally. I also would love to be able to build a better future for all young people, including generations to come, and keep both national and global organisations on their toes with regards to updating acts protecting young people online.

My top online safety tip:

My top online safety tip is to always talk to someone you trust, whether it be a teacher, parent, or any other trusted adult, if something worrying happens to you on the web. It is essential for the wellbeing of anyone to talk to others, and a statement I like to use is “A problem shared is a problem halved,” as this is a reminder of the fact that no matter how old you are, how wise you are or how independent you seem, you’ll never be able to live life without somebody to lean on.

Jeremy

Jeremy

What I like doing best online:

What I like doing online is creating/producing sketches and a bit of programming too.

What I like doing offline:

What I like to do offline is play on my piano creating my type of piece.

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion is to help kids, young adults, and adults understand the dangers of using the Internet and a device; how to handle them well and how to resolve them too.

My top online safety tip:

Be safe wherever you are, whether it’s an app or website that you know or not. There may be things that can make your day a horrible one.

Lauren

Lauren

What I like doing best online:

I love playing games with my friends, especially since the rise of among us. Other than that, I like surfing the internet in general, whether it’s social media, researching a topic I find interesting, or watching some kpop music videos and looking at lyric translations! I definitely spend a long time on YouTube too, mostly watching Minecraft streamers like WilburSoot and TommyInnit, but you’ll often catch me looking at storylines behind my favourite kpop music videos.

What I like doing offline:

I love swimming, and a lot of exercising in general, it’s something I’ve been doing for a long time and I still really enjoy it! I also like art, mostly just sketching, but my goal for the future is to learn how to paint well too. I really love languages, I’m currently taking French, Mandarin and Latin at school, but it’s really interesting and you get to learn about many different people and cultures.

What I hope to achieve as a Digital Champion:

My main goal is to learn as much as possible about online safety in order to help others learn, and maybe even teach my younger brother about it too. I want to help spread awareness about topics that are important, but are less ‘popular’ when it comes to talking about online safety, things like digital wellbeing and how to use the internet to enhance your learning, not just academically, but about the world. I’d like to help people see the good that social media and technology can do, especially since we often think about it so negatively.

My top online safety tip:

Don’t do or post anything you don’t want to online. It’s really important for your digital wellbeing because your platforms online are for you to follow who you want and to post what you want, as long as it is appropriate. There’s no point in following someone you don’t like, or liking posts you don’t want to. Feeling pressured to do these things online can build up and make you anxious, or lead you to not enjoy going on social media, so only do things if you want to!