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5 Easy Internet Safety Tips
Whether we like it or not, the internet is part of our children’s lives. They need it for school and they use it for play. Sometimes, honestly, it gives us a break when they are “quietly” using the computer. Sadly, we can never let down our guard when it comes to keeping our kids safe online. Here are 5 easy internet safety tips. Feel free to add your own in the comment section!
- Content Blockers – Don’t be afraid to block content. Your child doesn’t need to see everything on the web when she is searching for her latest science project.
- Communicate – Content blockers don’t block everything. Be sure to talk to your kids about what to do when something inappropriate pops up.
- Openness – Keep your child’s computer in the open like a family room where you can supervise activity more easily.
- Guidelines – Be clear on when, how long and what sort of work and sites a child can visit on the computer.
- Pay Attention – Children can innocently (or not so innocently) get caught up in sites, messaging, etc that is harmful. Nothing replaces a parent who pays attention.
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Yes parents, we need to stop being afraid of monitoring our children! Balance is everything, but there is no need to be an absent parent because you are afraid of crowding your children!
Agreed. Particularly the last one…my son loves watching youtube videos of his favorite shows and you’d be surprised the number of people who do completely inappropriate spoofs on KIDS shows…ridiculous! Definitely have to watch it closely!
These are great tips! It’s important to keep your eyes open!
These are great tips. I’m going to be sure to share them with my siblings for my neices and nephew! Thanks so much!
Thanks for the tips. My daughter is always on my laptop and it even surprises me when I accidentally hit ?able sites. Thanks!
Great ideas! You can never be too safe!
Great tips!
I agree with you, it is so important to make sure that we set guidelines for safe browsing online for our children. There are so many bad things on the net, but there are also great learning resources. When rules are in place it makes for a better online learning time for the child & less worries for the parent!
In order to protect my kids when they’re online I use a very easy to configure tool called Qustodio (http://www.qustodio.com/). Of course it’s not enough, so I try to communicate with my kids as much as possible in order to explain to them that not all there is on the Internet is good.
I strictly monitor EVERYTHING my children do on the computer. I’m sure they have no idea about how many things are available on the web. And….I’d like to keep it that way for awhile.
This is exactly what to do with kids these days
What great tips! Thanks for sharing. It’s true that children are becoming socialized more over the internet than at school.
When my kids were young, we had a program called EnuffPC, it let us put in accounts for all of our kids, and the amount of time they were able to stay on the computer. I don’t know if it still exists, but it was a GREAT program
I loved this list – very thought out & appropriate. My son is almost 8 and has a love for YouTube, unfortuantely I don’t feel completely comfortable with him on there. You never know what they will come across, the content, language, etc.
great tips, the kids can only use the computer which is located in right off the kitchen so we can see everything
it seems as though the idea of family computer is long gone – but it is so important to teach children accountability when using the internet, having a parent in the room that could walk by at anytime is a great way to let kids know you are there when they are tempted to head in a bad direction or to a bad website.