Lesson video

Hi, my name is Mr Gee and I'm your teacher today for the RSHE lesson on Internet Safety and Harms looking at online relationships and harmful behaviour.

Today, we are going to focus in particular on something called Catfishing.

In this lesson we will learn about what catfishing is and how it can impact on victims. We will also look at the reasons one may try and catfish.

If this is a sensitive topic for you, please chat with a trusted adult before starting whether this is at home or at school.

Let's get started.

So in today's lesson, all you're going to need is your exercise book or a piece of paper and a pen to write with.

Let's get going.

So, first of all if you have not completed the intro quiz, please can you go back and complete it? I will be able to see your answers.

So it will be great to see how well you're doing and how well you understand previous topics and a little bit of information about what we are doing today.

What we're going to look at today is what catfishing is.

So some of you may understand already what catfishing is but we're going to have a little look in general for those who don't have a full understanding.

We're going to look at what the problem is with catfishing and the problems that it may cause.

So it does cause many, many problems but we're going to look at what these are.

We're going to look at how you can identify someone who's trying to catfish and someone who is impersonating someone else online.

And then we're going to complete an exit quiz so we can assess how well we've gone today and how much we understand of today's lesson.

Look at some of the keywords we're going to focus on today.

Just to introduce you to the phrase of catfishing, it is where someone creates a social media account to target a specific victim.

So the reason they do this is to try and trick someone into thinking that they are someone else whoever that is, to gain some finance or some other ways of trying to trick someone.

Exaggerating, so someone who's catfishing may exaggerate and it's making something seem better or worse than it really is.

So that is the general use of the word exaggerating.

And a catfisher is impersonator, which is where someone pretends to be someone else.

It's just a little fourth question to begin with.

Only teenagers can be victims of catfishing.

Do you think that's true or false? I'll give you a second just to think about the answer for that one.

It's false.

That is false.

Anybody can become a victim of catfishing no matter what age they are at all.

People who catfish are only after money.

True or false? I'll give you a little bit of time just to think about the answer.

The answer to that is false.

Anybody can be a victim of catfishing and there's a number of reasons why someone would want to catfish.

And we're going to look at them throughout this lesson today.

So what is catfishing? It is a fish that's swim across the bottom of the sea, across the bottom of ponds, okay? But catfishing in terms of the online meaning, is the practise of pretending to be someone different in order to trick someone or attract another person.

So back in 2010, there was a documentary where 24 year old male began a relationship with a 19 year old female.

It turned out that that 19 year old female wasn't actually a 19 year old female.

It was an actual older housewife who had tricked the 24 year old into thinking she was a real person.

So this 24 year old been going along thinking that the 19 year old female was a true person, a real person, and actual fact, they weren't, It was someone else.

So why do people catfish? So I want you to think of the reasons why people would catfish.

Write them down and we will compare answers in a minute.

I'll set you a target of five as a minimum but if you can come up with more, fantastic.

So please pause the video and we'll come back in one minute.

So why do people catfish? So the reason, one of the key things that has appeared over the last 10 years is to try and get people into a romance.

So people will pretend that they're someone else.

And that is to try and attract that other person that they're targeting into an online moment, which could then lead to a real life one.

Obviously, it doesn't happen that way because when the person may realise this, that the person have been speaking to is not a real person, they're freaked out by it, and normally, they sort of end the relationship there with them.

Sexual exploitation.

All right, this is a really obviously serious issue.

And it happens a lot online, okay.

Especially to children, sadly.

So we really, really need to think about who we're talking to and what the intentions of that person are.

As it says there to humiliate or embarrass their target.

So it may be someone else knows and they want to embarrass them.

They may set it up and then they can turn around and say how that person was tricked.

Obviously that is humiliating.

And it is not a nice thing to do.

I think the second most common is to financially exploit someone.

And the reason people will obviously do that is to try and get some information off someone about their identity or to try and get the person to send them money.

And this can be done quite often through blackmail.

So blackmail, if anyone doesn't know, is where someone says to someone, you need to give me money or else I will do this to you.

So they may start to post pictures.

They may spread rumours about that in individual.

And also boredom, right? We've touched on boredom before where things like trolling are like boredom.

Is no excuse at all, but it's one of the reasons why people may do it.

What is the problem with catfishing? Well, I think from the issues we've just looked at there you have an understanding that the reason that people do catfish will cause problems. So just a quick question here, which is not a danger of catfishing? So losing money to a scam, receiving hate, being advertised a product or sexual exploitation.

All four, are ways that social media and online communities are used sometimes in negative ways.

But which one is not the actual danger? Give you a couple of seconds to think this through.

That's fine, being advertised a product.

All the others there are dangers whereas being advertised a product, isn't a danger.

It is just sometimes an annoyance.

Although it may be something that you want to see, because it says that all of the others are harmful, this is more of an annoyance.

I want us to think about what the outcome could be of catfishing.

What is the actual issue of it? So what potential issues could this cause the victim further down the line? So what could the outcomes be? So we've talked about why people catfish.

What could the negative outcome be for the victim? I want you to pause the video and I want you to come up with a list of what do you think the individual negative outcomes could be for a victim.

Pause the video and we'll come back and chat in a minute.

Well, listed below, there are a number of different outcomes for a victim.

They could be embarrassed.

Obviously, if you've been tricked online by someone you don't necessarily want loads of people to know.

So there is the embarrassment factor.

Mental health problems. This could be from the embarrassment, or it could be from the fact that you've aware of people and it can cause some sort of anxiety and emotional harm.

So it's really, really important that you realise this.

If you ever feel that you are going to be trying and catfish someone.

Financial loss.

Obviously that, if you are a victim of catfishing through someone extracting information, that is quite a serious issue.

We touched on sexual exploitation and child sexual exploitation.

These are really, really serious issues and they are very common.

So please, I would recommend if you don't know someone online, don't talk to them.

I just don't think it's worth it a lot of the time.

Bullying, so people being nasty.

And physical harm.

So if you end up meeting someone as a result of catfishing, okay, the result could be physical harm.

So like I mentioned earlier, I would just steer clear of people who you don't know because you don't know who they are.

Anyone could portray being someone else online.

How do you identify if someone is pretending to be someone else and how do you prevent it? So below there are some different types of issues.

I want you to pause the video, okay, and identify which ones below could be the sign that someone is a catfisher.

I'll give you a few minutes to work this out but pause the video.

Not all of them are signs of catfishing, but please pause it and we'll see which ones are.

Okay, how many did you get right? So I, there have seven, all right? So it was 12 at the start, and now there's only seven left.

So there was five that have been removed.

So listed below, are the possible signs.

Quite often catfishers will avoid personal communication.

And the reason for that is obviously they are not the person they are portraying to be.

The profile picture rarely changes.

And the reason could be that they don't have too many pictures of who they're portraying to be.

Lots of friends of one gender.

So if they have obviously someone who is looking to exploit young girls or young boys, they may focus on one gender, which obviously is really, really worrying.

So be aware when you are, obviously someone asks you to be a friend or whatever it may be or a connection, that, that could be the case.

asking you to meet them without having seen them.

Don't ever meet anybody without having seen them, okay? It's just a rule in general or someone that you know, if you don't know them properly, don't meet them.

Someone that's vague about their past.

Obviously if they've got no past, then they're not going to want to talk about it because essentially it's not there.

Why would someone ask for bank details that you don't really know? The reason being they're trying to defraud you.

And they can never chat on the phone.

And the reason they may never chat on the phone is because they are not the person that they are saying they are.

How can you stop catfishing? Just don't connect with anyone you don't know, really obvious.

If you are unsure, do your research and check if there is more than one account.

Because that person may be catfishing many people.

So just be careful with that.

Look at how many friends they have.

If they don't have too many, it could be someone that is just targeting a small group of people.

Never give out any personal information, any personal information at all, where you live, what you do, who your friends are.

Don't tell anybody if you don't know who they are.

And report the account.

So certain social media platforms will have report in the account.

Thanks for working with me today.

If you'd like to share your work with Oak National, please do with the Twitter handle @OakNational, with the hashtag #LearnwithOak.

I'll see you soon.

Bye for now.