Internet child safety tips

Cyber-smart parents care about their child’s use of the internet and how to maintain safety.

As some children are at home now, most of them are preoccupied with chatting with friends and being entertained by social media.

Other children are returning to school, which means increased reliance on phones, tablets, and other gadgets for homework, assignments and project work.

It is preposterous to assume their safety as they navigate these gadgets when no proactive steps have been taken to keep them safe. This is what we are faced with in this dispensation, and we must not look on helplessly.

While I call on schools to actively support parents in their efforts to protect their children from unwanted images, online predators, cyberbullies and other online dangers, parents have a responsibility to talk to their children and incorporate a few simple, effective and agreed upon steps to provide them with a safe internet experience.

Strategies

Parenting strategies must be adapted to establish ongoing dialogue with children. Lines of communication must be open enough for them to engage parents.

This is how we can get into their world to get to know them more deeply enough to provide them with whatever guidance they may need. When this rapport has been established, parents must be interested in the kind of websites, social media apps, and games their child uses.

Cyber smart parenting requires one to be familiar with age-appropriate apps their child can use so they can advise and take action.

It is not too much to seek to know who your child is talking to on social media, email and text. Before the advent of this internet technology, most parents knew who their children’s friends were.

This enabled them to protect their children because they could meet physically with these friends, interview them and decide the kind of influence they could have on their children.

Not so in this era where mere pop-ups can introduce new virtual friends from any part of the world to them.

Parental controls

Parental controls should be set on all internet-enabled devices, including filters to block inappropriate content.

Monitoring tools to track app usage, website visits, and screen time even on gadgets that the children may be sharing with their parents or other adults may be necessary to keep them safe.

While adults are encouraged to supervise the use of all internet-enabled devices available, they must present themselves as responsible users of the internet who do not leave traces of images and contents that are inappropriate for children on shared devices.

In a recent counselling session, one adolescent admitted to being exposed to porn from her dad’s gallery of photos and has since been addicted, now browsing from the same websites she discovered from that device.

Children have become smart using all forms of abbreviations to communicate. It will pay to be interested in supervising photos and videos that they post and send online through their mobile devices. Even with this, they know how to outwit parents by sending photos and videos that should be viewed and opened once.

This is why parents should be concerned about long screen hours. Encourage healthy physical habits and limit screen activities. During family meals and outings, all screens should be turned off as a rule.

As much as possible, devices should be kept in places rather than in bedrooms, especially overnight.

This is to ensure that children are getting enough sleep throughout the night and not sleeping late or waking up in the middle of the night to feed their fear of missing out (FOMO).

These are some rules and discussions parents and children should have in the best interest of the child.

The writer is a Child Development Expert/ Fellow at Zero-to-three Academy, USA.