How parents can protect kids online
Establish ground rules with them before letting them loose on devices
Jamie Riley’s 11-year-old son has a Nintendo DS, a Kindle Fire, an iPad, a laptop, a Wii, a PlayStation and an iPod. His eight-year-old sister has a Kindle and uses her mom’s iPad to watch Disney shows. Both kids love their technology, but especially for the 11-year-old, it defines his life.
For Riley and millions of other families, they wonder how they can keep their kids safe and smart while figuring out this hyperwired world.
“We don’t want to deny him — we just have to be a part of it,” Riley said. “It’s taking (on) more parenting (responsibilities), but it’s worth it.”
She knows the risks, and she took action soon after her son learned his first “terrible word” when he was eight years old, from watching a YouTube video with friends about how to get to the next level on a Mario game, she said from her home near Chattanooga, Tenn.
To protect her kids from accidentally seeing sexual content; from getting scammed, stalked or bullied; or from simply spending too much time in front of a screen, she set up an Internet router with strict filters.
Some protections are simple. Riley, for example, positions her son’s computer in his room so that his parents can see what he’s up to when they walk by.
But the most important tool keeping him from falling into the screen trap? Lots of conversation.
That, say parenting experts, should be the first line of defence. “Our kids are digital natives, and we’re digital immigrants,” said Deborah Gilboa, a family physician and parenting expert. A mother of four, she asks her own 14-year-old for help. She went to him, for example, to school her on Snapchat and how to use it.
“Acknowledge that kids are more expert than you are,” Gilboa said. “We really teach them something valuable when we respect them enough to ask them about it.”
Parents also need to explain to children what they may face once they start using devices and the Internet. “It’s setting up a relationship with your child in that if they see or do something online that might be a bad idea, they come talk about it.”
Discuss in advance what to do if a friend shows them something inappropriate. Give them enough knowledge and confidence so they can walk away.
These conversations have to be ongoing, said Clayton Ostler, chief product officer at Net Nanny, a parental control app. “Set up ground rules as a family before you turn them loose,” he said.
Diana Graber, founder of CyberWise, teaches parents and kids about social media and technology. She points out to parents the controls embedded within the software.
“Almost all of them have controls,” Graber said. “They cost nothing because they just come from the equipment.”
So, she said, before you hand your kid that first phone, set it up for them.
Then, move on to content restrictions in the apps that are on the devices. You can turn off explicit lyrics in iTunes, for example, or lock kids out of inappropriate content on YouTube. A quick search online will show you how to do that for each app.
Lakweshia Ewing’s 15-year-old half-brother that she and her husband have raised, knows that if he misuses his phone, Ewing gets it and he needs to earn it back. They’ve had plenty of conversations about device use, but she supplements that with tracking his online actions.
She has an app installed on his phone so “I get a mirror for every text he sends and gets.” (One example of such an app is TeenSafe.)
Ewing also geotracks him so she knows where he is, and she set up the native app for the wireless provider’s package her family is on so she can track all six lines they have. And yes, he knows about all of it.
So far, it’s gone well for her 15-year-old.
“This isn’t about clamping down on your child and not letting them experience the world, said Adam Pletter, a child psychologist and founder of iParent101, a workshop focused on parenting and technology. “It’s not about stopping them. It’s about connection to their behaviour.”