Understanding Young People's Experiences of Cybersecurity

Young people are increasingly becoming responsible for the security of their devices, yet do not appear to have the knowledge to protect themselves online. In this paper, we explore young people’s knowledge of cybersecurity through a series of workshops with school children, and co-develop cybersecurity lessons aimed at engaging this demographic. We find that technical demonstrations are an effective way of engaging young people’s curiosity in the subject, and that group activities aimed at exploring the subject are preferred methods. We also find that while knowledgeable about cybersecurity theory (e.g. passwords), their actual behaviours did not reflect best practice. We discuss the role of schools in cybersecurity education and how to best embed this content in the curriculum to maximize the engagement of students, including a focus on teaching about cybersecurity protective tools