How to protect your children in the world of digital devices

As human beings, we tend to learn from virtually everything around us. No matter if it’s from personal experiences, books, television, friends, or even the internet, we can absorb information from a variety of different sources. One of the most important learning tools today is the internet. If you want to learn something, then it’s probably available on the internet. Children, at some point, will be exposed to the world wide web, and teaching kids to use the internet safely should be our top concern as parents before they get online. This article addresses internet safety and what you should be concerned about as a parent.

How can we teach our kids the value of the internet from a learning perspective? What can we do to encourage them to use the internet to learn new things and not just play games or use social media? In this post, we’ll discuss some methods and give you ideas for online safety.

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Teaching Kids to Use the Internet Safely for Learning

Things to teach before letting your kids online

Household Rules

Make sure to go over the household rules before giving your young children internet access to any devices. Depending on the age of your child, it is a good idea to restrict access to search engines. Doing simple searches can expose your child to a lot of inappropriate content.

Once, I searched for cherry wood folding chairs because I wanted to buy some nice folding chairs. However, the very first website I clicked on was filled with porn. The company running the website waited until the legitimate company accidentally let their registration lapse and bought it up. The offending content was only online for a short period of time, but that is when I happened to click on it.

Be aware that even legitimate companies have been hacked and obscene content posted. This is why it is essential to have parental control software set. While it can be frustrating when the parental controls won’t let me access a legitimate site because of a keyword or phrase (my husband routinely says, “I don’t understand why you can’t access that site”), I know that I am helping keep my children safe online.

Personal Information

Make sure your children know never to give out personal information online, even to people they think they know. Hackers have ways of spamming and taking over online profiles. How often do you get messages from friends saying, “my Facebook account was hacked?” If you always check in personally when a friend sends you a request to “help them out,” you will save yourself and your children a lot of heartaches.

Ensure your children know not to give out their phone number, social security numbers, or home address online. It is so easy for predators to find phone numbers and send random texts hoping to get a response from someone unsuspecting. Teaching kids to use the internet safely means protecting them from dangers.

Teach your kids about their digital footprint

Many children don’t understand that everything they type, send, and search creates a digital footprint. One of the best practices for teaching your kids how to use the internet safely is to teach your children now that everything will be saved forever somewhere in the online world. If you wouldn’t say it in real life, don’t say it on the internet.

Children don’t understand that if they post something on their social media accounts, it can still be accessed and found even if they are using apps such as Snapchat. Kids think because snaps go away after being watched, that means that no one can see that content later, but everything done online can be found by someone.

Kids also think that chat rooms are safe if they are not using their real names. However, predators can find the IP address of the person chatting to get their location. Chat rooms are filled with online predators posing as tweens and teens looking to earn your child’s trust and schedule a meet-up. One of the best ways to prevent this is to teach your children about what is lurking out there. While we want to protect our children’s innocence, if you think they are mature enough to have devices, they should be mature enough to learn about the dangers of those devices.

There are many educational resources on the internet

There are a significant amount of fantastic educational resources available on the internet, and some even come with a lesson plan. Furthermore many of them are entirely free. For example, if your child wants to learn more about a particular culture or the history of a country, then they can simply look it up on a website like Wikipedia. Volunteers maintain Wikipedia, but that doesn’t mean they’re not credible. They often add sources to all of the claims they make. This makes it easy for someone to fact-check information and gives Wikipedia more credibility.

These educational resources can make learning more fun because it helps your child stay curious. It’s not uncommon for a child to look up information about a specific topic only to dive into five other pages to learn about related subject matters. There are plenty of learning resources on the internet, but the content often needs to be curated by you before you serve it up to your children.

Online tutors are also available if you don’t have time

Another good way to teach your children is to use tutors. Tutors can be virtual these days since they don’t need to visit your home. They can simply sit in front of a camera with a screen-sharing device to give your child a home lesson. These services are beneficial for everything from basic subjects to more advanced topics like physics. If you find that you don’t have time to tutor your kids or help them with homework, then a tutor can be a good substitute for the days that you’re unavailable.

Look for services that offer tutors and try to find one that meets your standards before investing in them. Make sure if you use an online tutor, you use a legitimate service that uses background checks for their tutors. Also, ensure your children know not to give personal information to the tutors.

Using YouTube and other video resources

YouTube is one of the best sources of educational content on the planet–and much of the content is completely free! YouTube has many different creators that push new educational content every day. All of it can be accessed on the YouTube website, and there are no extra payments to worry about. It’s usually best to check the content before showing it to your child. This will ensure that it’s teaching your kids the right things and also protect them from any questionable content that you don’t want them to see.

If you are using YouTube, it may also be beneficial to purchase a subscription to avoid advertisements. Questionable ads are served up even in children’s content.

Furthermore, there are other video sources as well.

For instance, Generation Genius offers a plethora of online resources that cover science, math, and other similar subjects. From online videos that will teach your child about space to lectures on math problems, there’s something for everyone here. Video resources like this are fantastic if you need a little break from tutoring your child since they can sit down and watch them. However, it’s best to occasionally check up on your child after these videos to see if they’ve learned anything or if they have questions for you.

Learning through games

There are plenty of online games that make learning fun. Again use legitimate websites and make sure the companies producing the content have values that line up with your values and goals for your children. Just because a friend says that a website is awesome doesn’t mean that you will be happy with the content. I remember one such site when my kids were younger. Everyone loved the learning content, but unfortunately, I noticed a flippant attitude with one of my younger children. When I looked at the educational website, the characters were talking disrespectfully to one another, and my child picked up that tone.

Social media platforms

Very little learning happens on most social media platforms, but you must teach your kids how to use the internet safely by navigating online activities before they have accounts. Just because most platforms are a place to be social doesn’t mean your children won’t be learning valuable lessons by spending some time on social media accounts. Simple lessons of how to craft a response to a comment or knowing when to walk away and not respond are important lessons to teach.

It was a rule in my household that their first social media accounts had to have me or their father as a friend. Navigating virtually with online bullying and new platforms can be scary and difficult. Set rules for how much time your children can spend on their mobile devices and social media platforms. Teach them about privacy settings and, even with those settings, how people screenshot and make public comments that they thought were being sent through a private message. Children say things first and then think about those things later. A misconstrued joke or comment can have a lasting impact throughout their adult life.

But you need to make sure that your sources are accurate and safe

While learning with the internet can be a fun and rewarding experience, you must think about the legitimacy of some of those sources. This is especially important when it comes to things like historical records. It’s pretty easy to taint information on the internet, especially when there aren’t many sources. This is why it’s imperative to fact-check everything before you believe it. Teaching your kids how to fact-check is part of a good education. Just because you read it online doesn’t make it accurate. These critical thinking skills will serve them well and help keep them knowledgeable and safe online.

In the case of learning, you should always use verified sources if possible. When your children are doing school projects, if there is anything that could be debatable, such as the historical accuracy of something, you should always look for the original source. Failing to do so could teach your children the wrong things, and they might take this information out into the world, oblivious to the fact that it’s false.

Remember, the first step to teaching kids to use the internet safely is teaching them. Don’t expect someone else to teach them about the dangers of social networks and the online world.