The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) is currently carrying out a youth-led project that will run from December 2024 until March 2026 with the goal of amplifying young people’s views and experiences to improve child safety online in Scotland. This project is being run in partnership with the NSPCC, who is also working with their online safety participation group – Voice of Online Youth – and partner organisations in Wales and Northern Ireland to help foster nation-specific impact across the UK.
Leading this project is a working group of 10 young people – aka Digital Safety Ambassadors – who are passionate about ensuring that decisions made to reduce online harms targeting children and young people in Scotland directly consider actual young peoples’ experiences and opinions. In this light, the working group is at the centre of all project decisions and actions.
Furthermore, to ensure we hear from young people throughout Scotland, this project has incorporated six regional voice groups from different geographic regions of Scotland, who will take part in insight-gathering and resource co-design workshops led by the working group. The map below shows where regional voice groups are based, with four Parliamentary regions in the central belt being consolidated into two groups:
This project is an incredible opportunity for Digital Safety Ambassadors and regional voice group members to create national-level change to protect children and young people’s right to be safe online, along the way:
- Collaborating with a team of motivated young people.
- Developing organisational and communications skills.
- Becoming confident facilitators and youth advocates.
- Designing creative approaches to addressing difficult topics – targeted at young people and the adults in their lives.
Key activities of the working group include:
- Receiving relevant project training to upskill in planning, insight-gathering, youth-friendly facilitation, meaningful participation, project evaluations, and communication.
- Designing and leading in-person and online sessions with regional voice groups to explore key issues in children and young peoples’ safety online.
- Co-designing resources with regional voice group members to help young people campaign for changes related to child safety online.
- Taking action to amplify children and young people’s views through meeting with Scottish decision-makers and tracking campaign influence.
- Meeting with young people who are leading project mechanisms in Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the Voice of Online Youth to share project learnings and successes.
- Running an online event in November 2025 to showcase the child online safety tools they’ve developed to key Scottish stakeholders and decision-makers.
If you have any questions about this project, please contact Lucie Paradis, SYP’s Participation and Programmes Officer by emailing lucie.p@syp.org.uk.
