A Guide to Keeping Your Kids Safe Online

The internet is a dangerous place for your children, so you need to do everything possible to keep them safe online.

Block Access to Harmful Material

There are lots of things on the internet that it’s not good for your kids to be exposed to. There are the obvious things like adult content and pornography. These can have a distorting effect on your child at a crucial time in their life. And once those kinds of images have been seen, they can’t ever be unseen.

It’s not just pornography you have to worry about though. It’s becoming increasingly common for websites to be created that celebrate eating disorders and slimming. If your child displays signs of an eating disorder, you should take them to a doctor quickly, and block sites that might have encouraged their behaviour.

Monitor Interaction Carefully

It’s probably not going to be possible for you to read every conversation your child has online. And it’s probably not even a good idea to try and do that. But you should foster an open and honest relationship with your child when it comes to online interactions. From an early age, you should make sure that they’re happy to discuss what they do online with you.

That way you’ll be able to pick up on any suspicious activity that might be going on. The risk posed to children by online predators and people looking to groom them is big. It’s something that every parent should keep on top of to avoid anything terrible happening. You should also be aware of cyber bullying. You want them to feel comfortable about talking through these things with you.

Don’t Give Them Free Reign Over Your Credit Card

If your child has a smartphone or tablet, the chances are they have access to your credit card. Everyone needs to have a credit or debit card attached to their App Store account before they can download games. Yes, most games are free, but a lot of them aren’t too. That’s why you have to be careful about what they’re buying.

If you’re not keeping an eye on it, they might spend a lot of money without you realising. This is an even bigger danger if they’re young and don’t fully understand the concept of money. It can be hard to understand that you’re spending money when you’re just tapping buttons on a screen. Even the free games have internal options to upgrade or unlock new levels, and this is where the cost comes from.

Teach Them About Privacy and Personal Information

It’s incredibly difficult to maintain privacy online. No matter how hard you try, there is usually some way in which your privacy will be breached. This can be very dangerous children. If you think about the information that they put on social media sites, all of that information is there for the world to see.

One thing you can do is make their profiles private so that only their friends and not strangers can see what they’re saying and access their personal information. You should also try to teach them about the importance of not entering too much personal information into websites and apps.