Teaching children to be safe online

It is without doubt a time when we all are experiencing the many advantages of being able to go online to keep in touch with friends and family, play games and share photographs of life during lockdown but how do we keep our children safe when they may be using the internet more now than ever?

Some of the restrictions that you will need to put on your child’s online activity will be dependant upon their age. For instance, young children should not be able to access the internet without you vetting what content they are viewing, and parental controls can be set up to ensure this is the case. Games they play on should have in app purchases turned off and be rated as appropriate to their age. It is a good idea at this stage to talk about the importance of keeping your real name, age and location secret to all but friends.

For older children it becomes more problematic as you cannot always monitor everything, they do online however parental controls can be set so that whatever they access online can be viewed by the parent which in itself will restrict their viewing.

With older children conversations will need to be had explaining the pitfalls of posting images and comments online and the possible repercussions of this in the long term.