This week, I had one of those parenting moments I won’t forget. And let me preface this by saying: I’m not completely naïve when it comes to tech. I have a pretty decent understanding of digital risks, and I like to think I’ve put solid boundaries in place at home. Which is exactly why I’m sharing this, because it could happen to anyone, however careful you think you are.

My son is in Year 3, and his school – like many in the UAE – has a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. In his case, this device is an iPad which is parent-bought and used for classroom learning. The iPad is managed through an MDM system, which limits what the children can access and helps to ensure the device is used appropriately. Additionally, we’ve opted to keep his device at school full-time, including weekends, because I’ve learned the hard way that when the iPad comes home, it’s a breeding ground for arguments, meltdowns, and endless battles with his not-yet-developed prefrontal cortex.

However, storing the iPad at school is optional, and not all parents choose to keep the MDM software enabled after school hours. Some families prefer to take the device home, whether for homework or simply because they feel it’s more secure with them. These varying choices create gaps in the system, and that’s when things can begin to fall apart.

The Car Journey Home

After school one day, my son got into the car looking fired up. He’s a passionate, sometimes tempestuous 8-year-old boy, so a bad mood isn’t unheard of, but this time, something was clearly bothering him.

When we got home, he came to me and said, “Something happened today. Please don’t get cross.”

He explained that during his ICT lesson, a friend (age 7) had started giggling and said he was going to AirDrop something funny to my son. My son knew he shouldn’t have accepted the AirDrop, but he couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing whatever this very funny thing was going to be. The image popped up. He saw it.

“It was a weird picture,” he said. “I think it was inappropriate.”

I asked him to explain, and he tried. “It was a girl… in a bikini… sort of hanging mid-air over a pool. It looked weird. I thought maybe there would be sharks.” What he was describing turned out to be a screenshot from a YouTube Short—someone trampolining in a skimpy, red dress, caught mid-jump in a compromising pose. To an eight-year-old? It was confusing, confronting, and yes, utterly inappropriate.

“I Don’t Get Why It’s Funny”

My son sat with me, trying to unpack what he’d seen, what it meant, and why it made him feel strange.

“I know my friend thought it was funny,” he said. “But I didn’t really get it.”

We talked about peer pressure, how people sometimes laugh to fit in, even when something doesn’t sit right or they don’t really get the joke. We spoke about how doing the right thing often feels uncomfortable, especially if you’re worried that you or a friend might get into trouble, but it matters.

Then came the harder question:

“But why would a girl want a photo like that of her taken?”

His 10-year-old sister, who happened to be nearby, joined the conversation. And together, we waded gently into a discussion about consent, pressure and the confusing ways puberty and technology can collide. I told him no one should ever feel they have to send – or laugh at – images that don’t feel right. Nor should they ever ask someone to send an inappropriate image. Just because something circulates online, it shouldn’t normalise it. If we ever see content of this nature, we need to break the chain and report it.

It wasn’t a conversation I was ready to have with him at 8 years old, but luckily I have read up a bit about this topic and I was grateful to have the opportunity to address it – I was lucky that my son spoke up, but I know this might not always be the case.

The Bigger Problem Isn’t the Photo

The next morning, I went in to speak to his teacher. She was brilliant. Empathetic. Her own son had once been exposed to inappropriate content, and she understood the impact it can have. He had immediately reported the incident to her, and the other child’s parents had been spoken to.

Nonetheless, I asked to escalate the issue to senior leadership, not because I couldn’t handle the conversation at home, and not because my son was traumatised. But because what happened is a red flag that the system isn’t working as it should.

Their response?

Mostly good, but I was hypothetically asked whether I would have felt differently if the child had cut something out of a magazine to show my son instead. It was also mentioned that the image ‘could have been worse.’

And this is the point that I was trying to get across. This isn’t a magazine passed around a classroom. This was a surreptitious AirDrop on school premises during an ICT lesson, on a device that is always kept at school. The digital nature makes it more secretive, less likely to be picked up. More insidious. And more likely to escalate.

We talk about “but for” causation. But for the school mandating iPads in Year 3. But for the optional take-home policy. But for the controls that weren’t sufficiently in place around AirDrop use… my son would never have seen this image. And had he not spoken up? None of the adults involved would have known.

What Schools (and Parents) Need to Hear

If schools are going to mandate digital devices for children as young as 7 (and it looks as though they are here to stay), they must do more to protect against this risk.

Here are a few ideas:

• Have a clear Acceptable Use Policy for devices that covers AirDrop use.
• Use the MDM system to configure restrictions and disable Airdrop on supervised devices.
• Make sure children fully understand the rules and why they exist.
• Mandatory in-school storage of devices for as long as possible—ideally well beyond Year 3 and certainly after a case of misconduct.
• Random spot checks of iPads – communicated to students to act as a deterrent.
• Digital literacy education that covers conversations about pressure, consent, online content, and emotional responses to what they see.

This isn’t alarmist, it’s a real safeguarding issue.

A report published by the Children’s Commissioner for England in 2023 found that the average age of first exposure to pornography is 13. However, 27% of children had seen it by age 11, and 10% by age 9. The study also highlighted that 38% of 16- to 21-year-olds had discovered pornography accidentally.

My son only just turned 8 and I thought I had time before I needed to have these conversations. But this happened on an iPad stored at school, in a school lesson, and on school grounds.

We have a chance to fix this before it gets worse. Let’s not waste it.