How to support your children's safety online

You surely know a small child who cannot yet walk or talk properly but handles a smartphone or tablet without trouble. And you surely know a teenager who can work wonders with a computer and rolls their eyes when you ask about something they consider trivial. The identifying mark is that you constantly see this individual holding a phone whose passcode not even a special forces unit could get out of them. As a matter of interest, how long does it take you to make a PowerPoint presentation? A year-eight pupil I know managed it on his phone on the bus to school in about 25 minutes, having forgotten his homework.

A different generation

If you too have asked yourself how it is possible that these children have such skills, the answer is simple. Those born earlier are known as digital immigrants. They still remember the time when the first push-button phone came to market, when the best game on it was Snake and people rang once and hung up. And although it was not that long ago, they were born into a different age. Digital natives is the term for people born after 1980 — here rather after 1990 — who were born into an environment of information technology and find their way around it easily. So your child is a digital native.

There are many differences between these generations, from their values to their ability to concentrate on a longer activity or project. And every age a person lived in shaped their body too. Have you ever considered how we use our hands? The previous age was the age of the index finger. It worked the buttons and keys, it typed — or rather pecked — on a keyboard or a typewriter, at least for those who could not touch-type. From the groundbreaking device that was the remote control, the era of the thumb gradually arrived. And that age is in full swing now with game console controllers and smartphones.

The "new normal" the post-Covid period brought developed the virtual world further still, and even those who were not previously active in it were forced to discover it. For children it mattered to keep teaching continuous, which meant markedly more time spent at a computer.

At the same time it presents every parent with a new set of challenges. How can you make the most of everything the internet offers while minimising the potential harm? How do you help your native survive in the digital wilderness?

6 ways to support your children's safety online

Below are a few basic points many parents forget.

A safe setting through open communication

It is a cliché and at the same time the most frequent recommendation for heading off any problem in raising children, and for preventing conflict at home, at school or at work.

Before you unpack the difficult subjects, try small, regular practice sessions so your child genuinely feels you are truly interested. Set aside enough time and attention regularly for talking to your child. Start small by getting the child talking. Open questions are excellent — ones that cannot be answered with yes, no or fine. And try asking in an interesting way, so that amid the daily routine you do not unload the classic interrogation on the child: how was school? What marks did you get? Did you eat your lunch? If you cannot quite manage on your own, some articles on Google list as many as 30 ways of talking to children. And once you have asked something, then genuinely listen and try to engage without judging. That is how a child's ability to communicate is built.

The basic thing a child should be able to tell apart and understand is the value of supportive, kind interaction, and to understand that discriminatory or inappropriate contact is never acceptable. Many adults lack that discernment, and behind the anonymity of a keyboard and an invented nickname all sorts of creatures hide, as the comments beneath various posts on social media show.

According to a KPMG study, as many as 96% of children aged 13 to 14 have had at least one personal experience of cyberbullying. Be alert if your child seems upset or secretive about their online activity.

Rules

Almost half of 11-year-old schoolchildren had no parental rules about how long they could watch television. Similarly, about 4 in 10 young people had few or no parental rules about how long they could be online. (Slovak Youth Report 2018) The data is fairly old and current figures would certainly be more interesting.

An Ofcom study showed that 86% of children aged 3–4 have access to a tablet at home and 21% have their own. We now see small children playing games online, talking to family, watching videos and even learning to use voice technology such as Alexa and Siri to find out about their world.

Build your own rules with your child about how, when and where devices can be used. If they help write them and understand the point of them, they will identify with them more easily. Which is not to say they will accept them entirely readily. What matters is that you should be able to keep to them yourselves, since you are your child's greatest example. And above all, start as early as you can. Can your pre-schooler eat without a video or a phone? What do you do when they cannot settle down for a long while? Put a phone in their hand? Sometimes the simplest road is the road to hell.

Use technology to protect children

This point is a touch more technical but very important. If you can manage to create a Facebook account, you can manage these parts too with the help of Google, or of an IT friend.

When did you last check whether your child's device has the latest software and antivirus installed and whether the privacy settings are switched on? Now is probably the right time. And we are not talking only about a computer, but about the phone and tablet too, which many people forget.

If you have younger children and want their positive experiences of the online world to last as long as possible, you have a range of parental control tools to choose from, safe search included. And you know yourself that the internet can be quite a wilderness.

Personal data

What matters particularly to realise, and to impress on children, is that personal data is never sent to untrustworthy sources. By personal data we mean photographs too.

Various free training courses and competitions asking people for their contact details, for instance, are worth checking. Recently many people I know shared on social media that a well-known food chain was celebrating 100 years and a form with personal details had to be filled in. A week later another chain was celebrating 100 years with the same competition.

An attempt to steal your personal data is called phishing, and it means trying to obtain access to a credit card, an address or login details through fraudulent emails and websites that pose as the genuine article but come from fraudsters.

Remember to check the privacy settings so as to minimise data collection. Help your child learn to keep personal data private, above all from strangers.

Spend time online with them

Create opportunities for your child to have safe, positive online interaction with friends, family and yourselves. Connecting with other people matters more now than ever before, and it can be an excellent opportunity to model kindness and empathy in your "virtual interactions".

Spend time with your child identifying age-appropriate apps, games and other online entertainment.

Trustworthy sources

One of the most frequently used words of the past two years was hoax. It usually means alarming false information warning of a danger that does not exist.

We now live in an age where what matters is not the information itself but the source, or the person who put it into circulation. Since in life, in the universe and on many subjects what matters is interpretation, the angle, perspective and taking many facts into account, it matters enormously to know where information comes from and to check its sources. In the past information reached us through print media, which took some time. Today the point is to be first with the news, which affects its quality considerably.

Young people's idols and role models have changed too. As many as 70% of teenage YouTube viewers say they trust influencers more than traditional celebrities. Influencers build their own community, which speaks to the natural human desire for acceptance and young people's need to belong somewhere.

In closing

Dear parents, if this article gave you something to talk about, left you in two minds or brought more questions than answers, then it has served its purpose. Because asking ourselves questions is the first step towards finding answers.

And a small spy trick to finish: if your child often travels alone and you worry, you can install an app on their phone that will send you their location. If you were thinking of sharing that information with a partner the same way, consider whether you really want to know, to check where they are — or would rather build trust.