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Children as young as four will get cyber safety training amid fears some are producing sexually explicit material.

The federal government is expanding an existing program from the end of March in response to concerns about incidents involving younger victims, reports 9 news.

“Our law enforcement agencies are seeing shocking incidents of children as young as four producing sexually explicit material, uploading it to social media, and subsequently engaging with online child sex offenders,” Cybersecurity Minister Angus Taylor said on Tuesday.

Liberal MP Anne Ruston said safety online was a key focus, given growing digital access.

“All actions that can be taken to ensure the cyber safety of our young Australians is absolutely paramount,” she told reporters in Canberra.

Labor senator Doug Cameron said while kids needed to be kept safe, there were other issues.

“It’s no use simply being concerned about young people in this country and their access to the internet when you’ve got Jim Molan using the internet to push bigotry,” he said.

I actually believe they should be starting to drum cyber safety into children from a younger age. My youngest turns nine this week and he hasn’t done any cyber talks at school yet. I believe it is a focus from grade 3 onwards, which is too late in my opinion.

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  • I do believe children from year 1 & up should be subject to these cyber safety talks. It was needed back when I was in primary school, I remember using the computer and talking to people on the old MSN. I could have easily been targeted by creeps. I don’t want that for my children

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  • I can’t believe that children that young would be using technology unsupervised. If there is proper supervision, is this really an issue?

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  • Check this out: Telstra Foundation funded ‘PROJECT ROCKIT Online,’ Australia’s brand new curriculum of cool anti-bullying and cyber safety development for students in years 7-9. Consisting of three online workshops that tackle (cyber) bullying by building empathy and leadership, PROJECT ROCKIT Online guides students through a fun, practical and engaging online learning journey that incites reflection and encourages positive change. https://exchange.telstra.com.au/takes-village-stamp-bullying/

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  • If children weren’t allowed on Computers and similar technology so young it wouldn’t be an issue for pre-school children. Obviously the parents aren’t taking any notice of the numerous warnings from opthalmologists about the blue lights that reflect off the screens of them and TVs etc. That’s also why it is risky to let children sit too close to a TV…………Children don’t start school until the are 5 y.o. Not all go to Kindy or Pre-school so they may not be taught soon enough. Are they going to understand the lessons about this subject at that young age?

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  • My daughter is in Grade 1 and is learning about cyber safety, I think that is early enough. They are learning about with a song so I think it is being done correctly.

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  • In my opinion, with the amount of technology kids use from such a young age, 4 is not too young to be learning cyber safety.

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  • Cyber safety sure is I.portant, but my 4yr old doesn’t have a clue about that

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  • Four years old? That looks quite early to me. I would start maybe in Year 1.

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