Education · Classes 5 to 7 · Digital safety
Digital safety for young students starts with games, chat and messages, because that is where this age group actually is.
Many students at this age are online well before they have an account of their own. The device is borrowed, the chat window sits inside a game, and the class group runs on somebody's mother's phone. This session gives students a small number of rules that work in exactly those conditions, and one adult to take a problem to.
In short
Digital Safety for Young Students is a supervised workshop for Classes 5 to 7 that covers games, chat and messaging rather than social media. Students practise simple rules: what stays private, what to do about a message from someone unknown, and which adult to tell. Schools provide the group, the room and supervision.
Why this matters
Most of it happens in a game, not on a feed
Discussions about children online tend to start with social media. For this age group that is usually the wrong place to start, and it leaves out where the actual decisions are being made.
The first unknown person arrives through play
An open chat window in a game, a squad invitation, a friend request from a username nobody at home recognises. A student is likelier to meet the question here than on a feed, and it arrives in the middle of something enjoyable.
The device is often borrowed
A parent's phone for a video, an older sibling's tablet for a project, a friend's account for one turn. Advice built around 'your account' and 'your settings' misses a good part of how this age group is actually online.
Private information does not feel private
A school name on a profile, a class number, a photograph taken at the front gate, a full name inside a username. Each looks harmless alone, which is the reason to name them together, calmly and once.
Money sits inside the game
Free items, spin wheels, a friend who knows somebody who can get skins cheaply. This is ordinary commercial pressure aimed at children, and it is far easier to discuss beforehand than to unpick afterwards.
A group chat does not stop at the school gate
What is said in one at nine at night is in the classroom the next morning, and the two are one situation rather than two. Schools that treat them separately usually end up handling both anyway.
What we cover
The rules students leave able to say
The whole-school digital safety programme covers privacy settings, images and consent, scams and online reputation with older students who have their own accounts. This version assumes none of that. It stays with rules that work on a borrowed device, and it makes its point without frightening anybody.
What counts as private information
Full name, school, class, area, phone number, what the front gate looks like, and when you are alone at home. Sorted by the class rather than recited at them.
A password you can remember and nobody can guess
Long beats complicated, three unconnected words work, and lending one to a friend for one turn is how most of them stop being passwords. No real password is written or said in the session.
People you have not met
A friendly stranger in a game is still a stranger. What a request means, why the friendliness is not evidence of anything, and why an adult should hear about it either way.
Games: chat, voice and squads
Where the chat is, how to turn it down or off, what a voice channel exposes, and what to do when a squad member starts asking questions about you.
Free offers, in-game buying and scams
Spotting the shape of an offer — urgency, a gift, a link, a request for a login. Students practise on invented examples made up in the room.
Pictures, before they are sent
Who can keep a picture, who can forward it, and the simple test of whether you would be comfortable with a teacher or a parent seeing it. Nothing graphic is discussed.
Unkind messages
Telling a joke from something that should be reported, what to do about a group that has turned on somebody, and why leaving it running is not neutral.
Stop, leave, block, tell
Four steps in a fixed order, said aloud until they are memorable, plus a trusted-adult map naming three adults the student could actually go to.
In the session
How the rules get practised
Every scenario used in the session is invented for it. We do not reconstruct a real incident, from this school or any other.
- A sorting activity: information cards placed by the class into 'keep private' and 'fine to share', with the borderline ones argued over.
- Building a strong password as a class from three unconnected words, without any student's real password being used.
- A supervised scenario: a friendly request from an unknown username during a game, worked through step by step in threes.
- Saying the four-step rule aloud as a class until it can be repeated without the board.
- A 'spot the offer' round on invented in-game freebies, where groups identify what makes each one suspicious.
- A message that could be a joke or could be unkind: pairs decide what it is and what they would do next.
- A trusted-adult map, written on a card the student keeps — three adults, at least one at school and one at home.
- One class rule about devices and chat, agreed together, which the class teacher can display afterwards.
By age
What changes across the three years
Class 5
Rules are given as short fixed sentences and repeated aloud. Scenarios involve games and a shared family device. Nothing about images beyond the simplest version of who can keep a picture.
Classes 6 and 7
More time on group chats, unkind messages and in-game spending, and scenarios with more than one defensible answer. Students are asked to explain their reasoning rather than recite the rule.
A group spanning the whole stage
The sorting and rule work is done together; the group-chat scenarios are run in age-separated threes, because a Class 7 example in front of a Class 5 group is neither useful nor appropriate.
What students leave with
Modest, and all of it observable
What a session of this kind can actually produce. Online safety is not something a workshop settles, and a school should not present it to parents as settled.
- Students can repeat the four-step response — stop, leave, block, tell — without prompting.
- Students have named three adults they could tell, on a card they keep.
- Students have sorted information into private and shareable themselves, and defended the borderline cases.
- Students have practised identifying what makes an offer or a request suspicious, on invented examples.
- The class has one agreed rule about chat and devices, in their own words, that the teacher can keep visible.
- The coordinator receives attendance, the topics covered, and the themes raised in questions, in aggregate and never attributed.
Formats
Ways this can run at your institution
Pick what fits the group, the hall and the time you can give it. Most schools start with one session and decide afterwards.
Interactive workshop
Classroom-sized. Scenarios, discussion, reflection, and an action worksheet the student keeps.
Awareness session
A concise introduction for a larger group — an assembly or a year group — closing with moderated questions.
Short programme series
Two or more connected sessions, with something to practise in between and a closing reflection.
Parent session
Held separately for parents — home routines, communication, expectations and boundaries.
What the school provides
Devices are not needed. The session works better without them, and the school's own policy is the frame we work inside.
Start a conversation- A class-sized group in a classroom, seated so pairs and threes can work.
- Forty-five to sixty minutes, ideally not immediately before a break.
- The class teacher present throughout, and briefed that a student may approach them afterwards.
- The school's own device and reporting policy shared with us beforehand, so the session does not contradict it.
- The name of the school's designated child-protection staff member, before the session rather than during it.
- No student devices in the room, and no live demonstration on a real account.
- A board or chart paper, and wall space for the class rule afterwards.
- A parent session scheduled separately, if the school wants the home rules covered too.
Safeguarding
How sessions with students are kept safe
A session on this subject can go wrong in two directions: frightening a ten-year-old, or prompting a disclosure in front of thirty classmates. These conditions are how we avoid both.
- Programmes are arranged through the institution and run in approved group settings, supervised throughout by a school-designated adult.
- No unsupervised one-to-one mentoring of a student, and no private messaging or personal contact between a contributor and a student.
- Contributors are screened and briefed for the role they are given, and may not use a session to sell or promote anything.
- We collect only the information a programme needs, and seek institutional and parent or guardian consent where it is required.
- A student's photograph, quote or story is used only with specific permission obtained beforehand.
- Anything touching safety, abuse, severe distress or self-harm follows the institution's own escalation and professional-referral process.
- No frightening examples, no real incidents and no images of harm. Scenarios stop at the point of a decision rather than following through to a consequence.
- Students are not asked what they do online, which games or apps they use, or whether anything has happened to them. Nobody is put in the position of answering that in front of the class.
- If a student discloses something during or after the session, the facilitator stops the conversation kindly and passes it to the school's designated staff member the same day. We do not investigate it and we do not contact the family ourselves.
- The trusted-adult card stays with the student, and the names written on it are not collected or read by us.
- No student's account, username, device or screen is looked at during the session, and contributors do not add, accept or message a student on any platform at any time.
- We do not state platform age limits as settled fact. They differ between services and change over time, so where a school or a family needs to act on one we point them to that service's current terms rather than to a figure from a slide.
Privacy, consent and child-data wording on this site is being reviewed against current Indian law before any student information is collected. See our privacy notice for what we hold and why.
Questions
Questions schools ask us
Do you discuss social media with children of this age?
We do not build the session around it, and we do not assume a class is on it. The content sits where this age group mostly is: games with chat, messaging groups and shared devices. Where students raise a particular service, the facilitator answers in terms of the same rules rather than commenting on whether that service is permitted for them.
Will frightening examples be used?
No. Scenarios are invented for the session, involve no graphic detail, and stop at the decision a student would have to make rather than following through to what could happen. We do not use real cases, news stories or images of harm. The aim is a student who knows what to do, not a student who is afraid of the internet.
Does the session cover online games?
Yes, and for Classes 5 to 7 that is usually the largest part of it. We cover in-game chat and voice channels, squad invitations from unknown players, requests for personal details during play, free-item offers and in-game spending. Students practise on invented game situations rather than on any service the class happens to name.
Should parents attend the student session?
No, the student session runs during school hours with the class teacher present. A school can add a separate parent session covering device rules at home, what to do when a child reports something, and how to keep a conversation open rather than confiscating first. It is held apart from the student session and is never a report on individual students.
What happens if a child reports something during the session?
The facilitator does not question the student about it. It goes to the school's designated staff member the same day and follows the school's own child-protection process, which is why we ask for that person's name beforehand. Any decision about the family, the police or a formal report is the school's to make with the family, not ours.
Related programmes
What schools usually look at next
About GullyFuture
GullyFuture is an initiative of Gully Future Foundation, Bengaluru. We design practical, age-appropriate group programmes and bring suitable educators, professionals and mentors to institutions that invite us. The institution provides the student group, the venue, supervision and the local context; we shape the programme and find the right people to run it.
We are not a tuition centre, a counselling or therapy service, a diagnostic service, a course marketplace, or a motivational-speaking business. We provide educational guidance and programme facilitation — not tuition, therapy, diagnosis, crisis care or guaranteed career counselling.
More about Gully Future FoundationPage review
Last reviewed . Guidance pages are re-read as programmes run and as rules change.
- National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India — Where an online incident needs to be reported formally, the school and the family use their own judgement and this route. Reporting is not something GullyFuture does on a school's behalf.
Bring this initiative to your institution
Tell us the classes, the group size and what prompted the enquiry — a game chat incident, a parent complaint, or simply that devices have arrived in the year group. We will propose a session, and a parent session alongside it if the school wants one.