For children, the internet is not just for fun, rather it is very fast becoming an indispensable tool for learning, playing online games and socializing. The best part of the online world is that it offers children experiences that are educational and rewarding. In addition, being able to use the internet effectively may increase a child’s school performance and future job potential. Sorry to say, but, it can also be a haven for explicit content, and a hunting ground for online bullies and predators. But, it is the responsibility of the parents to keep kids safe online as they would do in the physical world.
Nowadays children surf the internet for long hours, playing games, chatting with friends and strangers as well, and getting connected with friends on social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, snap chat, WhatsApp, etc.
However, this new medium also can present unsafe situations. Just as a parent you would not allow your child to wander alone into an unknown and unsafe place, you also would not want him or her to go on websites that are not meant for them or interact on the Internet with strangers without your guidance and supervision.
Expert Tips to Keep Kids Safe Online
The reason I am writing this post is that in the last 5 months I got 3 cases of teenage pornography and blackmailing. Out of those 3 cases, 2 cases are really terrible.
These things once out on the internet are really hard to stop, remove the pictures, videos, texts, etc.
And it takes a lot of time and money to do Online Reputation Management in such cases.
Before I start with my post I want to say a few words to every parent out there. Kids are your responsibility and you have to make sure to keep kids safe online.
In many cases, both parents and the kids have to go through a long phase of trauma.
And unfortunately, in a few cases, those victim kids kill themselves because of the shame, trauma, family, and social pressure.
To help you keep your kids safe online, I am providing an overview of few areas of the Internet popular with children (email, the Web, social networking sites, gaming sites, and chat rooms). For each area, we:
- List positive benefits, as well as possible risks, for your child.
- Provide a few effective parenting tips that are most relevant to that area.
- Explain what parental control tools can do and how can you keep kids safe online.
Parent’s Role to Keep Kids Safe Online
In this case where you want to keep kids safe online your role as a parent is to:
Learn about the Internet
If you are just setting forth, see what your community centre, informational websites, magazines, or newspaper offers by way of introduction to the world wide web and possible safeguards.
Get Involved
Spend some time online with your child, whether at home, at the library, or at a cyber café. Your involvement in your child’s life, including his or her online life, is the best insurance you can have of your child’s safety.
Stay Informed
Keep yourself updated about the parental control tools that can help you keep your kids safe online.
Adults and kids use e-mail as a way to quickly and cost-effectively communicate with friends, colleagues, relatives, all over the world.
Benefits for Your Child
- Keep in touch with teachers, family, friends.
- Get help with homework.
- Establish mentoring relationships.
- Practice writing emails to friends, relatives, teachers, etc.
- Receive online newsletters.
- Make world-wide pen pals (nowadays e-pals).
Dangers/Risks
- Kids can set up private accounts through free web-based email services without asking permission from parents or guardians which can be harmful to them.
- People using e-mail are vulnerable to receiving “spam” messages. Individuals or companies send spam e-mails to encourage recipients to buy something, do something, or visit a particular website. Additionally, spam e-mail can include sexually suggestive, moneymaking schemes, or otherwise offensive material. Spam e-mails may also have attachments or links containing viruses that could be harmful to the computer if downloaded.
- Senders sometimes disguise themselves and pretend to be someone else – a friend or acquaintance, a well-known bank, a government agency – in an attempt to obtain your personal or financial information. This is “phishing” and this way they can harm you financially and in many other ways.
- Strangers, at times pretending to be friends and somebody known to, can communicate with your child and get information which you would not want to share with them anyway.
Parenting Tips
- Share your child’s email ID and password.
- Talk with your child and try to know about the people he or she is meeting online.
- Set a rule that your child never arranges an in-person meeting without your presence.
- Complain about the sender of unsolicited emails to police and to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) about unwanted emails.
Why Parental Control?
- Can route your child’s email first to your account so that you can monitor your child’s email and what they are writing in their emails.
- Reject email from specific email addresses.
- Limit email with offensive language and personal information from being sent and received which can prove fatal.
BROWSING THE WORLDWIDE WEB
Benefits for Your Child
- Access to rich educational and cultural resources (text, sounds, pictures, and videos) which can help them learn new things, otherwise unavailable to most people.
- Get up-to-the-minute information about a number of topics.
- Improve the ability to understand and evaluate information available on the internet.
- Stay informed and updated by accessing your community and school Web sites.
- Play fun and educational games.
- Learn educational skills useful in the curriculum, extracurricular activities, and future jobs.
Dangers/Risks
- Easy-to-find sites with sexually explicit images and text.
- Easy-to-find sites promoting hatred, bigotry, violence, drugs, cults, misleading information, and other things not appropriate for children.
- Inaccurate, misleading, and untrue information which children can take as true and get in trouble.
- Online marketing practices that deceptively gathers personal information from kids in order to sell products to them or their parents.
- Requests for personal information for contests, surveys, etc., that are used in unauthorized ways.
- Easy access to games with excessive violence and gender stereotypes.
Parenting Tips
- Keep the computer in a family area to keep a better check on your child’s activity online.
- Spend some time on a regular basis online with your child to learn about his or her interests and activities.
- Help your kids search for information online. By searching the Internet together you can help them find reliable sources of information and make them learn to differentiate between fact and fiction.
- Teach your child to end any activity online immediately when he or she feels uncomfortable or scared by pressing the back key, logging off, and telling a trusted adult as soon as possible.
- Establish an atmosphere of trust and understanding with your child by not blaming him or her for uncomfortable online experiences, so that they can report you when they face any sort of problem and uncomfortable situation online.
- Discuss the difference between advertising and educational or entertaining content and show your child examples of each for their better understanding and remain safe while they are online.
- Establish strict rules for ordering products online (and then monitor credit card bills), better than let them come to you if they want something from any online store.
- Talkback or write an email to Internet Service Providers and content creators to let them know what you want and expect from them in keeping kids safe online.
- Choose an Internet browser with safety options appropriate for your children. There are browsers that are specifically designed for kids, as well as browsers that offer safer and age-appropriate filtering options. Many internet service providers (ISPs) offer free filters to help prevent kids from accessing inappropriate websites. Contact your ISP to learn what Internet-safety options are available and install one with the best security options.
Why Parental Control?
- Limit access to materials identified as inappropriate for children.
- Permit access only to materials specifically approved as safe for kids and better at least once you see those materials yourself.
- Allow yourself to specify what types of materials are suitable for your child.
- Monitor your child’s activity on the Internet by storing names of sites and/or snapshots of material seen by your child on the computer for you to view later with the help of software designed for this purpose.
- Limit results of an Internet search to content appropriate for kids.
- Enforce time limits set by you for surfing online for your children.
CHATTING/INSTANT MESSAGING
Positive Benefits for Your Child
- Talk to kids and teens with similar interests and concerns, in rooms specifically for kids that are monitored closely by adults.
- Communicate instantaneously with family, friends, teachers, community leaders, etc and exchange thoughts and information in real-time sitting at different places of the earth.
Dangers/Risks
- Children chatting with strangers might learn using offensive language and adult conversation.
- Because of its interactive nature, it is the most vulnerable medium online through which children might be encountered with people who want to harm them.
- Too much time spent online in chatting and browsing internet limits a child’s well-rounded development by taking the place of friends, sports, schoolwork, homework, and other activities.
Parenting Tips
- Go together with your child in chat rooms until he or she learns your safety rules.
- Teach your child never to give out personal information such as his or her name or address, school name or address, or anything else that is personally identifying and also tell him or her its bad effects and harms which it might catch, this way your children will remain alert all the time.
- Explain to your children that people are not always who they say they are, sometimes they are just fakes and trying to extract your personal information to harm you.
- Set a rule that your child never arranges an in-person meeting without your presence with anyone chatting with him or her online.
- Limit your child access to specific chat rooms or consider blocking out chat entirely if you feel appropriate for your child.
Why Parental Control?
- Allow access only to monitored and child-safe chat rooms or block access to all chat rooms if it is appropriate in your view.
- Block private messages between your child and another user chatting with him or her.
CELL PHONES/WIRELESS DEVICES AND TEXTING
Benefits
A number of parents and guardians consider mobile phones as a necessity for their children.
It reassures parents that their kids may reach them or call for help in an emergency.
But, mobile phones and wireless devices may also be used to send text messages, images, and videos.
Potential Risks
- Cell phones make it easy for children to communicate with others without their parents’ or guardians’ knowledge.
- Some children are nowadays using cell phones and wireless devices to take sexually explicit photos of themselves or other children and send the images to friends and others. Once sent, there is no way to retrieve these photos or stop them from being forwarded to additional people. Images posted online can circulate forever, which harms the child’s reputation, and can even be used by wrongdoers in an attempt to victimize other kids.
- Children may also take awkward or revealing pictures of others and post them online as a form of bullying others.
How to Reduce Potential Risks
- Make rules and set limits about the appropriate use of cell phones and wireless devices including who your kids may interact with and when they may use these devices.
- Keep a watch on cell-phone records for any unknown numbers and late-night calls or text messages.
- Teach your kids to never post their cell phone number online or share with any unknown person.
- Talk to your kids about the possible logical implication (imprisonment etc) of sending sexually explicit or provocative images of themselves or others.
- You can also consider removing or disabling the Internet features from your child’s mobile phone and wireless device through your service provider or creating settings to control or prohibit access to the Internet, e-mail, or text messaging in order to keep kids safe online.
POSTING VIDEO AND PHOTOS ONLINE
Benefits
Webcams, cell phones, wireless devices, and digital cameras allow children to post videos, pictures, and audio files online and engage in video conversations.
Children often use this equipment to see each other as they use Instant Messaging, chat, and play online games.
Webcams are often used to help kids stay in touch with family members, friends, and traveling parents and guardians and those living in other areas.
Potential Risks
- Capturing and saving webcam sessions and photos is very easy with the help of some software. And users may continue to circulate those images online on various websites. People may believe they are interacting with trusted friends but later find their images distributed to others or posted on websites that create very embarrassing situations later on.
- Capturing, sending, and posting sexually explicit and inappropriate images may lead to legal implications and other unexpected offline aftermaths.
Tips to Minimize Potential Risks
- Ask your children to only use webcams or post photos online with your consent and supervision.
- Tell your children to be aware of what is in the camera’s vision area and remember to turn the camera off when it is not in use.
- Tell your children to never post identity-revealing or sexually explicit pictures. Remind them once such pictures are posted they lose control of them and can never get them back. And its too late just after posting such pictures because people till then have shared it on various other websites and with other people as well.
ONLINE GAMING
Benefits
Online gaming permits children to engage with players from around the world over a computer network or on an Internet-enabled gaming console.
A number of online games have text, voice-, or video-enabled chat functions, giving players an option to communicate as a group or in private.
Moreover, online games often have online communities of players to share experiences and strategies about the game.
In a number of ways, online games and gaming communities serve as a platform for social networking.
Potential Risks
- For the reason that the children often play games online with people, they do not know in real life. So you should speak to them about what information is appropriate to share and what is not while playing online.
- As with Instant Messaging or social-networking websites, kids may learn an inapt language, harassed, threatened, or asked sexually explicit questions.
Tips to Minimize Potential Risks
- Set up the gaming console and computer in a common area of the home like the drawing-room. This way you can monitor your kids’ online communications and activities more closely.
- Define rules, comprising how long your kids may play online games, with whom they should play, and what types of games are appropriate for them.
- Help your kids choose suitable screen names or usernames. A screen name should never reveal identifying information such as real name, age, location, year of birth, school name, etc. Help your kids creating a strong password. For instance, using the first letter of each word of a phrase, alphanumeric combination, or an easy-to-remember acronym.
- Review the games’ rating systems online to decide which games you should allow your children to play online.
- Review what types of protections or parental controls the gaming console allows and make use of them.
Strategic Objectives for Kid’s Online Safety
Children must be taught to manage their own online behavior.
Put differently, by teaching our children respect, civility and citizenship online as well as offline, you can improve their chances for safe play and browsing, constructive and productive use of the internet, and cell phones.
Good parenting skills and establishing trust and limits with the kids can help keep them safe online and offline both.
HOUSE RULES FOR PARENTS TO KEEP KIDS SAFE ONLINE
The point is that your kids do not really have a right to privacy when it comes to internet or computer use.
And you as a parent have a right and responsibility to watch and control that they are not getting into anything which is harmful to them.
If something is illegal offline then it is also illegal online. Children up to the age of 16 years are entitled to exactly as much privacy as they can handle safely.
Children should be told upfront that their communications online will be monitored on a regular basis. This is a condition of their use of the Internet.
If they do not like it, they can find something else to do with their time.
A number of parents are afraid to take control of their child’s computer.
They are afraid of their kid’s mellow drama which they start once they are stopped doing something. You’re the parent, if you don’t like it, unplug the computer.
And if the kids don’t follow your rules do not allow them to use the internet at all. If you won’t take initiative, no website or software is able to help keep your kids safe online.
Summing Up – How to Keep Kids Safe Online
- Try to surf the internet together with your children.
- Make rules for internet use so that your children remain safe online.
- Encourage your children to be careful when disclosing personal information online.
- Talk about the risks and repercussions of meeting an online friend in person.
- Teach your child to be critical of online sources.
- Sit down with your children at the computer and teach them how to recognize ads. Also, teach them the difference between content and ads.
- Keep in mind that the computer is like TV and everything on TV is not appropriate for your child. Similarly, everything on the internet is also not appropriate for them. Teach them to be aware of all media.
- Don’t be too critical of your child’s web browsing habits.
- Report immediately about the illegal online material to the police.
- Remember that the positive aspects of the internet outweigh the negatives.
I hope that these tips will help you keep kids safe online.
