Good Practices to Keep Your Child Safe Online
Understand your parental controls.
Innocent online searches can lead to not-so-innocent outcomes; therefore, it’s important to understand how to use the parental controls and search limitations provided by web browsers, Internet service providers, and gadgets. For example, Google’s SafeSearch Filters function will filter sites that contain explicit sexual content. To enable it, navigate to Settings/SafeSearch Filters. Although not perfect, parental controls can help keep your kid from seeing or accessing the most violent or sexual content.
Understand who your children’s Internet pals are.
Adults are aware that some individuals online are not who they claim to be, but children and young people may be frighteningly naive about who they are speaking with if they are not trained to be cyber-savvy from a young age. Make friends and connections in your child’s social media circles, and keep an eye out for posts. Your children may object, but explain that this is one of the criteria for you to provide them access.
Most applications, networks, and gadgets include geo-tagging capabilities that publicize your location and can bring someone right to you. These functionalities should be disabled for obvious reasons of privacy and safety. Metadata (information regarding the time, date, and GPS locations) in digital pictures may disclose more than you want. Some social media networks automatically conceal or erase this data, but not all, so do your research and understand how much information you’re giving.
Keep an eye on your kid’s web browsing duration.
It is critical to supervise your child’s internet time, especially if they are young, to ensure that they do not establish unhealthy habits. Set a timer to go off once your children have agreed on an amount of time, say 30 minutes per session; don’t forget to make this a non-negotiable finish time. You should also turn off your house Wi-Fi at a certain period each night (preferably before sleep) so that everyone can take a break from the Internet. You may also try making some days in your house “screen-free” to encourage everyone to engage in more active and/or less technology-driven forms of entertainment.
