Here at Young Scot, we use social media daily to share information and content with 11 to 26-year-olds across Scotland, just like you. Please look at our Community Guidelines to understand more about how we use social media, and what we ask of you when you engage with our content.
Find out more about keeping yourself safe online by looking at our Digi Know page,covering topics such as how to change your privacy settings and what to do if you’re being bullied online.
Young Scot’s Online Community
Here at Young Scot, we use social media daily to share information with young people on a range of issues and topics, as well as fun content from quizzes to Young Scot Rewards opportunities. We share content and information here:
Follow us on Facebook for the latest information on a range of topics that are important for young people in Scotland. You can also keep up-to-date with our latest Young Scot Rewards, discounts and opportunities you to take part in.
YouTube
We share videos on YouTube on a range of topics, including interviews with young people, discussions and information on topics that are important to you.
TikTok
We share fun videos on TikTok on a range of topics, take part in trends and share the latest Young Scot National Entitlement Card discounts. Make sure to keep an eye out for our Gaelic content too!
Snapchat
Follow us on Snapchat for the latest information on a range of topics.
On Instagram, we use posts, stories, IGTV and Reels to share fun and informative content with young people. Keep an eye out for our quizzes!
We use Twitter to communicate mostly with other organisations, parents, carers and other people interested in the work of Young Scot. You are welcome to follow us there too, but you might see that the content slightly different to what you find on our other channels.
Similar to Twitter, we use LinkedIn to communicate mostly with other organisations, parents, carers and other people interested in the work of Young Scot. You are welcome to follow us there too, but you might see that the content slightly different to what you find on our other channels.
Social media plays an important role in young people’s lives – helping them to communicate, to learn, to stay in touch with friends and family and to meet new people. We provide information for young people on how to keep safe online through our Digi Know project. We also have policies (like this one) to help keep young people safe and we are always checking our channels but also the wider social media environment to make sure we can take actions to keep our community, our staff and young people Scotland safe.
Supporting You and Our Community
Our social media channels are managed by our dedicated team who are fully trained on how to use social media to share information.
The team is available between Mon-Fri (09:00-17:00) to answer your questions, comments and direct messages. At the weekends and during public holidays, our social media channels aren’t monitored, and you might need to wait a while for us to respond.
If you’re looking for information about the Young Scot National Entitlement Card, you can find this on our dedicated page.
We are the national information and citizenship charity; we therefore are unable to provide advice to you. But we can share information about other organisations that can help and support you.
If we ever feel that you or someone you know is in danger, we will take appropriate action. This could include contacting the emergency services or another organisation that can help, or if you’ve worked or volunteered with us before, getting in touch with your next of kin or another trusted adult.
If you need to speak to someone confidentially or urgently, look at our information on support and helplines with information about their opening times and how to get in touch.
You might also find our #AyeFeel information all about how to support your mental health and emotional wellbeing helpful.
If you write a comment in a language other than English or Scottish Gaelic, we will use in platform translation tools to understand your comment. Unfortunately, we’re only able to reply to people in English or Gaelic.
Keeping You Safe
We want to make sure nothing is shared on our social media that could put you or anyone else viewing our content in danger.
Remember, social media is a public place, so think before you post. You can find out more about how to check and manage the privacy settings on your own social media accounts on our Digi Know page.
To help keep you safe, we may delete, report or hide* comments that:
- Share that you or someone else has been harmed. This includes sharing information that you’ve been abused or neglected, now or in the past. Sharing this information can make you vulnerable. We will contact you through a direct message, if we are able to, to explain why we’ve deleted your comment and will provide you with information on support that might be helpful.
- Share that you or someone else is feeling suicidal or has self-harmed. It’s OK for you to post about these topics, but if you share something that might make you vulnerable in anyway, we will delete the comment. We will contact you through a direct message if we are able to, to explain why we’ve deleted your comment and will provide you with information on support that might be helpful.
- Include any personal details. This might include your date of birth, your home address or name of your school. Sharing this information can make you vulnerable. It’s OK to share a general location, like your local authority or city.
- Comments that show you’re under 13-years-old. The social media platforms that we use, except YouTube, require you to sign terms and conditions that say you’re 13-years-old or older. If you’re under 13-years-old and use YouTube, you need the permission of your parent or carer.
*Hiding a comment on post means the comment can be seen by the person that wrote it and their friends, but no one else. Deleting a comment means that it is permanently deleted from a post and no one will be able to see the comment.
Keeping Our Community Safe
We want our social media to be a place where everyone is safe and welcome. We understand that people have different opinions, and we encourage you to comment and share your thoughts and experiences, whilst being respectful of other people’s thoughts and experiences.
On some occasions, we may need to delete or hide comments, and where appropriate report comments on the social media platform, this includes comments about:
- Hurting someone else or wanting to hurt them
- Personal insults or threats
- Bullying or aggressive comments
- A person’s race, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, disability or other protected characteristics
- Swearing or intention to swear (for example, replacing letters in swearwords with symbols or abbreviating swear words)
- Link to something inappropriate or offensive
- Spam – where someone posts the same or a similar message continuously on one or multiple posts
- Adverts for commercial products or services
- Anything that may be in breach of the law
- Deliberately share misinformation
Misinformation is defined as information that is false, factually incorrect or inaccurate. This may be shared without the writer realising but can also be intended to deliberately deceive a reader.
Where appropriate, for example, where you post something that goes against that platform’s community guidelines, we may need to report comments on the platform using in platform reporting tools. This may result in actions being taken on your account. So, please be careful about what you say when commenting on a Young Scot post. If you’re not sure what the community guidelines are for each of the platforms, you can find out more at:
- Facebook Community Standards
- TikTok Community Guidelines
- Snapchat Community Guidelines
- Instagram Community Guidelines
- YouTube Community Guidelines
- The Twitter Rules
We also make use of in-platform monitoring and safety tools, that filter or hide comments that contain offensive language.
On rare occasions, we may block users or restrict users. This would happen if you continue to post comments that go against our community guidelines or take any other actions that may result in other young people seeing harmful or potentially harmful content, including misinformation. We may restrict an account to ensure our team is able to respond to comments and to ensure comments aren’t left on a post when staff aren’t available, for example overnight or over a weekend. Before blocking an account, we will warn you of this and provide you with a link to this page.
Young people often feature in a range of our content and complete a permission form before any content is published, this covers how the content might be used and the actions we take to keep them safe. One of the measures we take is to turn comments off on adverts that feature young people. We do this as part of our duty of care to the young people in our adverts. We welcome feedback on these adverts, and this can be done via direct message or by emailing contents@young.scot
If you have any ideas on how we can make our digital channels better, please email contents@young.scot