The majority of school-aged children are using group chats to communicate with their friends.

Staying in touch with each other is a wonderful thing, it keeps human connection alive in what at times has been a very isolating learning experience. Group chats however can often be a breeding ground for bad behaviour, with bullying and sextortion being high amongst negative experiences that students have faced.

The most commonly used group chat apps are WhatsApp, Snap Chat, Instagram, Discord, Kids Messenger, and Facebook Messenger, all of which allow individual and group communication.

Although the majority of group chat activity happens at home, schools do have a duty of care to minimise the risk of bullying and other dangers to a child. As such, here are a few tips to creating positive group chat experiences for your students:

• It is recommended that Primary School-aged children should only use Facebook Messenger for Kids so that parents can control what is going on in any group chats through the parental controls
• Devices should never ‘go to sleep’ with students. Normalise handing them over to their parents before bedtime or to put them in another room until the next day so they are unable to respond to messages at crazy times of the night and morning
• Help your students develop the skills to leave a group chat that is not helpful or is harmful in any way. Teach them simple phrases to remove themselves from toxic conversations - ‘Sorry guys, I’m not feeling comfortable talking about that’ or ‘This is getting a bit nasty for me, I’m going to go’. 
• Remind students that they must always be kind, respectful and responsible at all times while engaging in a group chat. All it takes is for someone to take a screengrab of cyberbullying for interactions to become public and be used as evidence against them.
• This is just a snippet of information that is available within the Safe on Social Schools Toolkit.