This article was written by Kayelene Kerr from eSafeKids.
IOS has an option to set your screen to greyscale. When greyscale is turned on everything on your phone will appear in black and white. It makes the icons on your phone look a lot less appealing! It can also be helpful for colour blind individuals and can extend your battery life.
You can use this and encourage children/young people to consider it.
1. Open Settings
2. Open Accessibility
3. Open Display & Text Size
4. Locate Colour Filters
5. Toggle on ‘Colour Filters’
6. Choose ‘Greyscale’ filter
Here’s some feedback I got when introducing this concept to a school in Victoria in 2021.
“A huge shout out and thank you to Kayelene Kerr for her eSafeKids Cyber Safety & Digital Wellness Webinar to parents at the school my kids go to here in Melbourne. The parents WhatsApp groups were running hot!
One of my biggest concerns during lockdown in Melbourne has been the excessive use of devices. Not only for school work but to entertain the kids while both my husband and I work. I've noticed my kids creativity, their ability to play independently and their ability to access joy in the "real" world go down dramatically during this lockdown. Not any more!!
One of my biggest takeaways (and there were MANY!) was to give our eyes a rest (adults included) from screens so we can minimise the risk of myopia and eye strain.
So we took some action to trial turning ALL of our devices to black and white mode.
The results are in! My kids have ZERO interest in playing with iPads or phones now. They use them more purposefully and we did a little experiment where we looked at the greyscale phone and then looked at the real world and it was shocking how infinitely more exciting the real world is!
Thanks again Kayelene Kerr for this and SO much more for us to put into action to keep our kids safe online.”
Child friendly books and resources
My recommended child friendly book for primary school aged children is The Fabulous Friend Machine. You may also like My Device Rules and The Surfing Penguin.
Further information
You may like to read the following eSafeKids Blogs:
To learn more about eSafeKids workshops and training visit our services page.
To view our wide range of child friendly resources visit our online shop.
Join the free eSafeKids online Members' Community. It has been created to support and inspire you in your home, school, organisation and/or community setting.
About The Author
Kayelene Kerr is recognised as one of Western Australia’s most experienced specialist providers of Protective Behaviours, Body Safety, Cyber Safety, Digital Wellness and Pornography education workshops. Kayelene is passionate about the prevention of child abuse and sexual exploitation, drawing on over 24 years’ experience of study and law enforcement, investigating sexual crimes, including technology facilitated crimes. Kayelene delivers engaging and sought after prevention education workshops to educate, equip and empower children and young people, and to help support parents, carers, educators and other professionals. Kayelene believes protecting children from harm is a shared responsibility and everyone can play a role in the care, safety and protection of children. Kayelene aims to inspire the trusted adults in children’s lives to tackle sometimes challenging topics.
About eSafeKids
eSafeKids strives to reduce and prevent harm through proactive prevention education, supporting and inspiring parents, carers, educators and other professionals to talk with children, young people and vulnerable adults about protective behaviours, body safety, cyber safety, digital wellness and pornography. eSafeKids is based in Perth, Western Australia.
eSafeKids provides books and resources to teach children about social and emotional intelligence, resilience, empathy, gender equality, consent, body safety, protective behaviours, cyber safety, digital wellness, media literacy, puberty and pornography.
eSafeKids books can support educators teaching protective behaviours and child abuse prevention education that aligns with the Western Australian Curriculum, Australian Curriculum, Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and National Quality Framework: National Quality Standards (NQS).
