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When did you last spend some time with your friends?

Was it at school, playing together at break time? Or after school, maybe in the park?

Perhaps you got together at a sports club or watched TV at home?

An important part of being a good friend is treating each other with respect.

Our families can teach us how to be respectful as we grow up.

We learn to:

• take turns
• share with others
• say please and thank you

Showing respect means being polite and thoughtful. It means behaving in a way that shows that you care.

It means sharing and taking turns, when you are playing a game together.

It means thinking about how your actions and words might make someone else feel.

It's just as important to treat our friends and family with respect when we get together online.

We might:

• play an online game together
• chat on a message app
• join an online classroom if we can't go to school
• talk to family who live far away on a group video call.

Being online is different than being together in person.

Sometimes we can't see the person we are talking to, or hear their voice. This can mean that we forget to be respectful.

When we send a message to a friend they don't always reply straight away. This could make us impatient and when they do reply, we might say something a bit disrespectful. We might even use emojis to show that we are feeling cross.

Part of being respectful means putting ourselves in another person's shoes and thinking about how our behaviour might make them feel.

Would you feel OK if someone got cross with you, for not replying to their message quickly enough?

Instead of being disrespectful, you could say, "It was great to get your message - thanks!"

Sometimes, people are so disrespectful and unkind, that it turns into bullying.

This means somebody keeps being unkind or disrespectful to someone. They are trying to upset them or make them feel angry or sad.

If bullying happens on a digital device or online, then it's called cyberbullying.

If you think someone is being a cyberbully, either to you or someone you know, then it's important to tell a trusted adult straight away and explain what is happening.

Being an online bully is an example of unacceptable behaviour.

Being responsible means:

• making good choices and behaving sensibly
• looking for ways to help others
• keeping your promises
• owning up and saying sorry if you get something wrong
• understanding the rules and sticking to them

We learn how to be responsible at home and at school, where it is especially important to make sure that everyone is behaving sensibly and following the rules.

It's important to be responsible online and there are lots of ways we can do this.

We can keep our passwords and other personal information private and encourage our friends to do the same.

If we see someone struggling online, we can offer to help.

We can learn the rules of the online games that we play and make sure we stick to them.

We might even offer to teach a younger brother or sister how to play a new game, rather than try and beat them!

Sometimes it can be tempting to be irresponsible. For example, perhaps there is a game we really want to play, but it has an age rating and we are too young to play.

The age rating is there to keep us safe. The game might contain content that we are too young to understand.

The responsible choice would be to find another game that has the right age rating. It will be much more more fun to play!

We could also forget to be responsible if we see a picture that we really like.

We might share it with our friends and say that we made it, so that they think we are clever.

This is called plagiarism and is a bit like stealing.

Being responsible means being honest and not copying other people's words, or taking an image and pretending it is our own.

The best way to make sure we are being responsible is to check with a trusted adult before we go online.