5 Proven Tips to Keep Your Kids Safe Online

Ensuring the online safety of children is something that worries many parents due to the various unforeseen dangers that lurk in the cyberworld. From cyberbullying to online child predators, the internet has become plagued with crime of increasing complexity.

However, the internet has also become an essential tool for learning, providing children with an infinite amount of information to stimulate their interests and creativity. Its appeal to kids has grown even more with all the entertainment it offers, from online games and music to social networking.

So, how can parents ensure that their kids can continue to benefit from the many virtues of the internet while continuing to ensure their safety? Here are 5 proven tips that every parent must follow.

1. Keep yourself up-to-date
Children surpassing adults in keeping up with the latest technology trends has become a common concern for many parents. So, if you want to ensure that you are a step ahead, then keeping yourself up-to-date about the digital world is a must.

While this could be a dreaded task for many parents who did not grow up in a highly digital world, it can be surprisingly fun and rewarding as you explore the many interesting facets of technology and ways to harness it to your advantage. For instance, you'll be surprised to learn and discover the various tools that are freely available to ensure your child's safety – from parental control apps like Kaspersky Safe Kids for computers and mobile devices, and people search sites like Nuwber that could carry out background searches, to specially-designed browser features like Safe Search Kids that is powered by Google.

So, updating your knowledge and following digital trends can help you in many ways than you could possibly imagine.

2. Teach your kids to be safe
While you enhance your knowledge about online safety, it is equally important to teach your kids to be safe while interacting online.

Preventing or stifling the online activities of children could often drive them to sneak behind your back to experiment or to gather information from others who could potentially mislead them. Therefore, empowering them to behave responsibly online by enhancing their knowledge and guiding their behaviors is always a better alternative to being overly restrictive.

Teach them the do's and don'ts of the cyberworld to protect and safeguard themselves – what information to disclose, what details should not be shared and how to identify suspicious behavior. Teach them online etiquette and how to express their opinions as well as to respect the opinions of others in chat rooms, social media platforms, and the likes. Also, make learning about online safety a fun experience and ensure that they recognize the reasoning behind these measures so that they are practiced with better clarity and understanding.

3. Set internet-access rules
It is also important to set clear guidelines for using the internet at home. While this may not be practical with teenagers, this is an important step for younger children so that you can teach them how to adopt a more controlled and disciplined approach to their internet use from an early age.

For instance, set specific time periods to use the internet, and be clear about how much time is allocated for homework and studies as well as for online entertainment. Keep the computer in a common area of the house to ensure that you have access to it and can easily monitor their online activities. Be clear about which websites are acceptable to visit and when they are expected to get your permission.

4. Set parental controls

While setting rules and empowering your kids to guide their online behaviors, it is also important to set controls in place so that you can track and monitor their activities and take necessary precautionary steps to protect them in a timely manner.

There are a number of measures you can take to set adequate controls in place. For example, ensure that you set up separate accounts with login IDs so that you are able to keep track of their online activities through their activity history logs, which are provided by many sites like YouTube.

Most browsers offer a number of safe browsing features for parents to filter out inappropriate content from search results. Google even allows time controls for watching videos, sets restrictions on third-party channels watched, provides search histories and even offers a separate child-friendly browser for younger kids.

You can also use parental control apps and software that provide a range of features for computers as well as mobile devices. These features may include screen time limits and schedules, internet filters, location tracking, app blocking, social media activity monitoring, and even mobile phone battery tracking. While all these may seem intrusive for teens, they are a great way to keep an eye on younger kids who are just learning their way around the internet.

5. Encourage an open dialogue
Encouraging and maintaining an open dialogue with kids is essential as no amount of controls could help you monitor your children's activities 100 percent of the time. Therefore, ensuring that they are able to have an open conversation with you is critical – whether it's to clarify something they are unsure of or to share an online experience that they found disturbing.

Allocate time for them to have a dialogue with you every day, and create an environment so that they feel comfortable to talk without judgment. Whether it's a new friend they have met online, or their latest online trends and interests or whether they are concerned about someone facing cyberbullying, you will be surprised of what you will be able to uncover by encouraging an open dialogue with your kids. After all, you can only take effective preventative measures if you understand the potential risks and threats that could threaten your child's online safety.

 

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