Making Sure Kids Stay Safe Online

July 30, 2020

Written by: Hikari Ward, LMSW

COVID-19 has left many parents relying on technology to engage their children in learning and occupy their children as they attend work meetings or complete projects. How can parents ensure children are safe without having to monitor them at all times? How can you teach your children about internet safety?

One of the biggest concerns regarding allowing children to have unlimited access to the internet is what material children might be exposed to. As a parent, you cannot control what is on the internet, but you can teach your children how to protect themselves online and still be active members of their digital communities. Setting up clear family rules is a great place to start. Below are some rules and guidelines to use as a starting point for discussion in your home.

  • Keeping private information private – make sure children know what information it is okay to share and what forums are best to use. Help them keep things like addresses and other information private.
  • Make sure children know that the same standards of behavior that apply on the playground, apply online. They should treat people with respect, and treat others how they hope to be treated.
  • Help children understand that sometimes people online are not who they appear to be. Using age appropriate language, help them recognize who they can connect with outside of online forums.
  • Keep the lines of communication open. Children should be able to come to you if they feel like something is not quite right. Help them respect that feeling in their gut to come discuss any interactions they have that might make them uncomfortable. Even if it seems small.
  • Talk to your children about developmentally appropriate healthy sexuality. At times children can accidently end up on pages with more adult or inappropriate content. Make sure they have developmentally appropriate understanding of how to handle those situations.

Once your family discusses these rules, create a physical copy of them and post them somewhere that is easily accessible. This will help everyone stay on the same page in case something comes up. There are also a few things you can do to make monitoring and supervising this activity easier.

  • Set parental controls for online devices to the age-appropriate level. Most browsers or systems also have options for filtering accessible content.
  • Place online devices in a public space in the house, where it is easy to see what children are doing online.
  • Periodically check browser history to see what sites your children are visiting.

These tips and guidelines are a great start to making sure your children are staying safe online. One last thing to consider: if your children do bring up something or report concerning situations, stay calm and praise them for coming to discuss these concerns with you. You can work with them to help come up with the best solution, and this will help them feel more comfortable sharing information with you in the future.

With many schools remaining online for the start of the year, keeping kids safe while online takes on a different meaning. If you would like more information, on these topics, please check out the resources used for this article.

https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/our-mission.

https://internetsafety101.org/agebasedguidlines

Hikari Ward is a LMSW, with almost 13 years of social work experience working with vulnerable populations of all age ranges including low-income, uninsured patients, immigrants and refugees, elderly in long term care, torture survivors, survivors of human trafficking, and children, adults, and families involved with the criminal justice system. She is currently one of the bilingual therapists in the TCHATT program.