An action plan to help keep children safe online has been unveiled.
Childcare and early years minister Mark McDonald launched the updated national scheme, which also aims to make parents and carers aware of the risks their children face.
Mr McDonald revealed the plan on a visit to NSPCC Scotland's Childline base in Glasgow, where he met volunteers helping children deal with internet safety issues.
He said: "While the internet and mobile technology have positively transformed our lives, I am concerned too many children and young people are being put at risk from online harm and abuse.
"We all have a responsibility to protect children and young people, and this updated plan sets out a number of actions to improve internet safety.
"Its priorities include equipping children and young people themselves to stay safe online, supporting professionals, parents and carers and continuing to work with digital and social media providers to ensure children are not exposed to harm."
The NSPCC's helpline provided 844 counselling sessions about the issue to children across the UK last year, up from 529 in 2014/15.
Matt Forde, national head for NSPCC Scotland, said: "The preventative actions put forward in the Scottish Government's plan are vital as the scale and nature of this type of offending requires strong measures to keep children safe online.
"Online safety is one of the major 21st-century child protection challenges and we know the internet is used as a gateway by abusers to commit hundreds of offences against children each year.
"Education is key to keeping children safe online and Net Aware - the NSPCC's guide to social media and gaming apps - provides advice and support for parents."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here