With the increasing digital presence in our world today, it’s normal for kids to be bought up around technology, and it’s most definitely a struggle and challenge for most modern parents. Kids want access earlier and earlier, and with the need to monitor their activity on the Internet while avoiding becoming overly protective and intrusive, it’s more important than ever to research ways to help keep them safe online. I’m super aware of this as a teacher, and want to offer some tips to keep children safe in a digital world.
Parents are expected to take an active and reasonable approach to help keep kids safe. There are plenty of ways that your kids can be safe online while still connecting to and socializing with their peers. Below are some of the top tips for keeping your children safe in a digital world:
Take A Proactive Approach
As a parent, when it comes to the safety of your children online there are bound to be some things that you want to shelter your children from and you should think about ways that you can do this with a digital environment. Not only do you need to be proactive with monitoring your children’s activities by using tools such as Family Orbit, but you’ll also want to think about using some preventative measures.
Some areas to consider include:
Block Sites-
This is one the most proactive ways of ensuring your children are screened from certain topics online, don’t fall into the trap of allowing your children to ‘accidentily’ fall upon content that they shouldn’t be viewing. You should be able to prevent them from seeing things you deem inappropriate by merely blocking certain sites, you can either do it manually or use a plugin.
Use a VPN –
If you’re not using one already, a VPN is a brilliant way of protecting not only your children but your family’s location by hiding where you are browsing from.
Use A Firewall-
You should make sure you have an updated firewall running at all times in order to stop any unwanted connections to your computer.
Know Who They Are-
It’s a good idea to make sure that you know who your children are planning to talk to and regularly ask about who they are connecting with. Make sure you’re aware of who they hang around with offline and online. If you have concerns the best way of dealing with it is to speak to your children and explain why you need to know.
Set Boundaries-
Although your children may not like all the boundaries thinking about things such as how long they’re online for, the times they are allowed access to the internet, the sites they can use, what are they allowed to do online, etc. it is important for successfully keeping them safe. One of the main keys when it comes to safety online is to prevent, prevent, prevent. If you take action before it happens you will come across fewer problems. It’s much better to prevent than to have to deal with a problem later. You’ll find that your children have a better understanding of what is right and wrong when it comes to online if you have preventative measures in place too.
These are just a few tips for keeping your children safe online. I’d love to hear how you’ve navigated the digital world with your children – do you have any ideas that you can share in the comments section below?
