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In recent months we have heard lots of news stories about the perils of the Internet, and how teachers and parents must be educating pupils in the do’s and don’ts of online activity, but are we forgetting one obvious group of educators?

As young people, we all took more notice of our friends than our parents and teachers at one time or another, so it would make sense to utilise this valuable peer group when it comes to e-safety too.

Ofsted recognise the power of peer mentoring and have included this as a feature of good and outstanding practice in their ‘Inspecting e-safety in schools’ briefing document.

Easier said than done!

There are one or two ways that this could begin in the classroom. By encouraging students to create their own resources that can be shared with younger pupils is one option. Or perhaps, involving students in the development of the school e-safety policy, giving them some responsibility for spreading good practice.

Outside of the classroom, why not follow the example of the Digital Leaders group from St Wilfrid’s School, who are not only interest in all things IT, but are also socially active students, with influence within their peer groups.

Without wishing to state the obvious, we can also learn a thing or two from the younger generation ourselves. No-one knows the latest apps being used by young people better than they do, so ask. Then check out the apps yourself and have a class discussion about them. They will doubtlessly know more than you, but it's ok to explore the pro’s and con’s together.

If your school has taken the bold step of treating your students as leaders and helped them to develop their own e-safety teaching resources, you may want to consider entering the Youth Manifesto Competition. This is an EU initiative to encourage shared good practice in e-safety education and learning. Find out more at www.youthmanifesto.eu/competition.

To help others learn from your students, why not let us know which apps are popular in your school by using the comments section below. We can share your thoughts with fellow teachers and all learn from the digital generation.

As I write articles for E-safety Support, I occasionally think that I’ve come across everything now, that nothing can really shock me or sadden me, but then I will read an article in the press or somewhere online and realise that this is not the case and that as long as there is the internet, there will almost always be something out there that is truly more bizarre, more sad or more sickening than what I read previously.

This is what I felt when I read about how some young people are actually going online and posting hurtful or abusive messages to themselves in the newest example of psychological self-harm. I have read countless articles about the increase in internet ‘trolling’ to the point that you can believe that at any one time, somewhere on the web, someone is receiving threats or being cyber-bullied in some way, most probably, by someone they have never met, but now it would appear that some people are actually doing this to themselves.

A study carried out by the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Centre (MARC) discovered that out of 617 young people that were interviewed, 9% had actually cyber-bullied themselves online.

There are various ways that teens ‘troll’ themselves. One method is to set up numerous profiles and send multiple abusive messages to themselves, things like “You are fat”, “Nobody likes you”, God, you’re ugly”, etc.

But why would they do that?

Psychologists who have studied this area say that young people with low self-esteem do this so that the comments posted by the “other people” (even when it is themselves sending the abuse from pseudo-profiles) offers confirmation of their own poor opinion of themselves.

Another way of inflicting self-harm is to use the different forums or social media sites to post open questions about themselves inviting strangers to answer questions such as “Am I attractive”, ”Am I slim” or “Is my hair nice”, etc. Any negative responses that come back reinforce those feelings of lack of self-worth.

Rachel Welch, who is the director of a self-harming charity, says that although cyber self-harming does not leave physical wounds, it should still ring emotional warning bells.

“Self-harm like cutting yourself, is a physical response to emotional pain, it distracts the person from that pain. Cyber self-harm is replacing emotional pain with another form of emotional pain. This negative emotional reinforcement is extremely worrying. Self-harming behaviours can change rapidly and escalate.”

It is often a desperate feeling of shame that causes someone to cyber self-harm and they typically find it hard to reach out and ask for help. What can help is for a young person who is, or thinking of, cyber self-harming, to talk to someone who doesn’t know them personally such as a qualified counsellor or ‘nominated adult’ at school. They will help them understand the reasons why they are doing such things to themselves without judging them and help them to nurture better feelings and emotions about themselves.

For further information about self harm, visit stepup-international.co.uk where there is support for professionals and parents to help deal with this issue.

When you were a kid or a teenager did you ever do anything that was just a little bit wild or irresponsible? Maybe at a party after a few drinks or as a result of student over-exuberance? We can all probably look back into our past, hold our head in our hands and groan at our own stupidity.

But, what if you had had something serious happen to you that you personally don’t wish to remember and, more importantly, you definitely don’t want other people to remember or be reminded of, as it could be having ramifications on your present life?

This is essentially the reason why a Spanish man took Google to court back in May this year. Mario Gonzales’ complaint was that a search of his name within the Google search engine produced hits of newspaper articles, from 16 years ago, regarding the sale of a property that had occurred in order to recover money that he owed. Mr Gonzales took his fight to the European Union Court of Justice arguing that the matter had been resolved and should no longer be linked to him.

The EU court agreed with him.

The EU Justice Commissioner declared that the judgement was a “clear victory for the protection of personal data of Europeans” and “The ruling confirms the need to bring today’s data protection rules from the ‘digital stone age’ into today’s modern computing world.”

What the Commissioner, Viviane Reding, was referring to was the European Commission 2012 proposal of a law giving internet users the “right to be forgotten” and that people had the right to request information to be removed from search engines, if it appeared “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”.

However, this ruling could have huge consequences.

Should anyone who does not like a particular article or story about them have the right to simply wipe it out of existence? What about people who stand for public office? At the moment they can be researched to find if their digital footprint reveals any ‘nasties’ from their past and, although at present there is a clause within the ruling relating to data that is of ‘public interest’, the 2012 EU proposal that this decision supports, is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission’s 1995 Data Protection Directive.

What about people who committed crimes in their younger days?

From a wider perspective, this issue highlights why we should be constantly aware of, and monitor our own ‘digital footprint’ - to see what hits appear when we ‘Google’ our own name. We should be ensuring that there is no content that, not only is potentially embarrassing or damaging to our character now, but to think what it could say about us in 20, 30 or 40 years time if, for instance, an employer came across it.

It is worth remembering that during the earlier stages of this legal battle between the Google and the EU Commission, Google won at every stage.

This why it is also crucially important that we teach our young people not to be so care-free about their ‘digital footprint’ (and indeed, their offline activities too) and before they hit the ‘share’ button to publish that embarrassing ‘selfie’ doing something they shouldn’t be doing or the ill-considered rant about a particular contentious issue, how will that look to others 15 years on when they are a professional, a doctor or a teacher?