Internet safety for Kids, Teach children to be careful on the Internet | 

Promote Internet Safety for Kids: Equip children with critical online skills. Teach them to prioritize tasks, think before posting, and make values-based decisions. Guide their internet use, just as you would with driving a car. Leverage parental control software like Circle and KoalaSafe for effective content filtering. On Safer Internet Day, commit to fostering a safer digital space for children by educating and raising awareness.

Concerns about the impact of harmful content on children on social media are increasing. Let’s take a look at a strategy through which parents can not only monitor their children’s social media usage but also determine how much time their kids spend on the internet.

Keeping your children away from online life is a challenging effort that many parents are familiar with. Our children and teenagers spend numerous hours on Instagram, striving to get ‘likes,’ and sometimes facing cyberbullying. They allocate their time playing games, watching YouTube influencers’ and YouTube Shorts videos, or chatting on various groups on WhatsApp with friends found online. 

 

safety for kids

 

Furthermore, by reading the news, you also become aware that many people, through the internet, manipulate others, commit identity theft, or issue threats. This can be distressing for you as a parent because your teenager often uses the internet, and it seems they are not aware of these risks.

Don’t worry; you can teach your child how to be cautious on the internet. However, you must be familiar with some facts about the internet.

Consider these facts of Internet safety for Kids

Not just through computers: Youth don’t only use the internet through computers. If the computer is placed in a location where everyone in the household has access, you can see what your children are doing. However, if your children have an internet-enabled tablet or mobile phone, they can use the internet in places where you cannot monitor them.

Excessive internet usage: Some young people spend an excessive amount of time on the internet. A 19-year-old girl says, “I think I’ll just check my email for five minutes. But then, I end up watching videos on the internet for many hours. It’s challenging for me to control this habit.”

Sharing too much information: Young people often share more information about themselves on the internet than necessary. The comments and images they post may allow criminals to guess where they live, which school they attend, and when no one will be at their home.

Consequences of posting everything online: Some young people don’t realize that whatever they post on the internet stays there forever. Some comments or images may cause problems for them later, for example, when applying for a job and the company’s owner searches for information about them on the internet.

Remember, the internet is not your enemy. Problems arise when it is not used wisely.

What can you do?

Teach your children to prioritize important tasks and use their time wisely:

Being responsible includes prioritizing essential tasks. Spending time with family, doing school homework, and contributing to household chores are more important than wasting time unnecessarily on the internet. If your child spends too much time on the internet, let them know the allowed duration and set an alarm so both of you are aware when the internet usage time is over.

Teach your children to think before posting information on the internet:

Encourage your children to ask themselves a few questions before sharing any information on the internet. Questions like: Will this comment hurt someone’s feelings? How will this image affect my reputation? If my parents or elders see this image or comment, what will they think of me? What will be my opinion of someone who posts such an image or comments?

Internet Safety for Kids according to Values and Laws:

Teach your children to live life not just according to laws but also according to values. You cannot always keep an eye on your child. Therefore, it’s crucial to teach them to differentiate between right and wrong. While it’s important to inform them about the consequences of certain actions, it’s even more crucial to encourage them to make decisions based on their values.

For this, you can ask them questions like: How do you want to build your identity? What qualities do you want to be known for? In this way, you can guide your child to make good decisions even in your absence.

Using the internet safety for kids is like driving a car:

Just like driving a car requires not only skills but also intelligence and caution, the same principles apply to using the internet. You must guide your child in the use of the internet. Regarding this matter, there’s a golden principle that both children and parents need to keep in mind, Youth have the experience of technology, while parents have the experience of life.

Internet Safety for Kids:

Use of Software:

Parents often hesitate to use technology, making it challenging for them to effectively use software designed to filter content found on social media. Most of the time, parents need to rely on children to share their account passwords, leading to dissatisfaction.

However, there is a promise in the market of new technology to provide parents with digital control, so that Internet safety for kids could be controlled. Systems like Circle, Disney, and KoalaSafe a parental control routers, and KidLogger claims to control all digital products in the home through a smartphone app. Other innovative products can connect to your home’s Wi-Fi router and allow control in different ways.

In systems like Circle, you plug a white cube into an electrical socket, and it instantly displays a list of devices connected to your home Wi-Fi, such as phones, laptops, tablets, etc. It offers various ways to control these devices and provides different filters for content filtering for children, teenagers, and adults.

You can also block specific apps and websites. Moreover, you can set the duration of internet usage and even define sleeping hours for internet access. Traditional filtering services can also perform all these tasks.

You can use specific apps and websites, block them, determine the duration of internet usage, and even set specific sleeping hours for internet access. All these tasks can also be performed through traditional filtering services.

Nowadays, internet service providers, cybersecurity agencies, and other web browsers provide suitable training on their services for all family members. 

Safety of Internet for Kids

On the occasion of Safer Internet Day, let us commit as parents and educators to play a positive role in educating our children about the safe use of the Internet.

In this context, we will provide appropriate guidance for children and actively raise awareness among relevant government and non-government institutions to promptly flag inappropriate online content for the safety of kids.