Teaching Your Kids About Being Safe Online Is Essential

It is your job as a parent to teach your kids about being safe online. You don’t want them to be making some of the mistakes that others have made in the past. Instead, you need to educate them about using the internet and make sure that they know if they are doing something wrong, that you will take it away from them for their own good. They might not like it in the beginning, but when they grow up they will see. So, what are some of the rules that you should implement if your kids are using the internet? Keep reading to find some suggestions. 

Don’t Talk To Strangers

The first thing that you should let them know is that they should never talk to strangers. Just because they are someone they met online and not in real life, doesn’t mean that stranger danger should not still apply. Ask them if they would talk to an adult that they didn’t know in a park if they didn’t absolutely have to? They will answer no, and you need to make sure that they understand that it is the same thing online. Make sure that any accounts they have been set to private to the maximum so that nobody can see what they are posting unless on their friends’ list.

By doing this, you will make sure that people who aren’t supposed to be on their page, aren’t. This will give you peace of mind, though we do recommend checking their friends’ lists regularly as kids have a terrible habit of not listening to their parents.

If You’re Being Bullied, Tell Someone

Another rule is that if your kid is being bullied, they need to tell someone, preferably you. There are a number of things that can be done about this, the bullying account can be suspended, you can deactivate your child’s profile and you will find the steps for how to do that in a link such as https://backlightblog.com/delete-deactivate-instagram. It’s important that you are told if your child is being cyberbullied. It can have a huge impact on mental health, so your child is going to need support now more than ever.

You need to make sure that you are looking at your child’s social media accounts every so often to ensure that this doesn’t happen or get out of hand. Despite your child protesting, this is for their own good as you don’t want to see them hurt or traumatized by some of the trolls on the internet.

Never Meet Someone You Met Online

If they have been talking to someone online, let them know that they should never go and meet them alone. It is extremely dangerous to do this, as you never know what is going to happen when you get there. You don’t need to scare your kids too much, but a little scare is probably what they need to stop them from doing it. Don’t go into details about things that have happened to kids who have done this, but let them know that bad thing happened, and you just don’t want them to happen to your child.

Talk to them though, and tell them if they are planning on going to meet someone they met online, that you are going as well. While it might not be cool to have your mom tagging along, it’s better than being unsafe. If you want to know more about online safety, https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/online-id.html have a fantastic guide. 

Don’t Go Onto Sites You Don’t Know

The final rule that you need to have is that you don’t go onto sites that you don’t know. If you have never seen the site before, you need to ignore it. Don’t click on any little ads that pop up and tell you to click a link as it will download malware onto your computer or device and a hacker will be able to access your personal information. As such, just stick to the sites that you do know, rather than just ones that look interesting.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you need to do if you want to teach your kids about being safe online. It’s an essential thing to do even if you don’t necessarily want to have this uncomfortable conversation with your kids. While it might not be nice to have to warn your children that there are bad people on the internet, it is essential that you do so in order to keep them safe. Good luck.