How To Keep Your Kids Safe Online
Fall is approaching faster than anyone would like at this point. For some of you, your children may be returning to school in-person, full time. While that comes with its own fears and challenges, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous. For other families, children will be going back to school in some capacity in person, and online. For the rest of us, and most families in California, our kids will be starting the school year attending classes remotely. With the internet being even more present in our lives than ever, this post is going to focus on how to make sure our kids are being safe when they are accessing the internet. This may not be the most fun post I’ve ever written, and at points it may be uncomfortable to think about these things, but it’s imperative that we keep these risks in mind and explicitly address them with our children to keep them safe.
Risks associated with access to the internet
Predators –
an online predator will seek out children and people with disabilities who are easy to manipulate, and they are good at this. They can pose as another teenager, become “friends” with your child online, and slowly get personal information from your child to steal their identity, or even convince them to do something for them that is not legal. Here is what you need to do to prepare your child:
Give them a checklist of information that they should never give out to someone online. This list should include birthday, social security number, address, school name, etc.
Encourage them to check with you if they are ever unsure if someone is trying to get access to their personal information.
Cyberbullying –
this is the harassment of others using the internet. This may be done overtly or in a very subtle way that your child may not even realize is harmful to them. Exposure to cyberbullying can lead to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Talk to your child about cyberbullying and some things to look out for:
Discuss what cyberbullying is and what it looks like so they can recognize it when it happens. (i.e., name calling, harassment, sending threatening images or statements)
Teach your child how to block someone on a social media site so they can control who they see and who has access to them
Encourage your child to seek the help from an adult if they ever feel like they are a victim of cyberbullying
Cyberbullying can go both ways, and your child may not realize that they are engaged in the behavior themselves. They may just be copying what they are seeing others do and not realize the consequences of their actions. For this reason it is important that your child knows what it is, how to identify it, the consequences involved, and what to do if they encounter it.
How to make sure your child is accessing the internet safely
Communicate –
have open and honest discussions about the positives and negatives of the internet. Talk about it frequently, check in with your child often. Ask who they are talking to, what they are talking about, and how they are feeling.
Rules and Monitoring –
create rules as a family for safe internet usage. Keep devices that have access to the internet in a common area where they can be monitored frequently and check their devices periodically. Have your child “turn in” their devices at a certain time each day so they do not have access to them overnight. Discuss the rules with your child and the consequences for breaking the rules.
Ask your child to show you what they like to do online.
Look through the internet browser history frequently.
Learn how to change privacy settings and block inappropriate material on your computers and devices.
If your child has a social media profile, make sure you are one of their “friends”.
Help your child set up their accounts online to maintain password control.
As we continue to navigate what is quickly becoming a “new normal” we need to adjust our expectations while still maintaining the same high level of safety and monitoring that is required when our kids are spending so much more of their day sitting in front of a computer.
One last thing that came to mind as I’m sitting at my own computer writing this: get your child some computer glasses, they are relatively cheap on amazon and will definitely help with fatigue, moodiness, and headaches as result of your child learning from a screen. While you’re at it get a pair for yourself. Self-care and all that. We will get through this.
