Let’s be honest here. It is not a safe world out there. There’s bad people and violence and identity theft… oh we’re sorry, did you think we were talking about the real world? No, our focus is on the digital one. It’s an equally dangerous place for people who aren’t savvy, and many parents and guardians ignore it.
It’s a fact of life that your kids will be going online eventually. So you need to help keep them safe and make sure that they understand how to be responsible. Let’s look at a few strategies you can take into consideration.
Know What Sites They Use
The first step in protecting your kids is to know where they go online. There’s a lot of perfectly safe places that they can spend their time. And then there are those sites which are the opposite of that. There’s a lot of areas that your kids should probably avoid if they are smart. If your little ones want to play online kids games on gamesgames.com, that’s absolutely fine, so long as they understand that there are some places they should not go.
Explain the Internet to Them
If you have kids and you’re worried about them, it can be a good idea to explain the internet to them before you let them loose on it. Sometimes locking down the internet abilities of kids isn’t the way to make them feel trusted and grown-up. In these instances, what you need to do is sit down with them and explain how the internet works. They need to know that they can’t give out personal information, that there’s no instance where talking to strangers intimately is a safe thing to do, and stuff like that. If they’ll be online regardless, at least help them to be safe.
Lock Down Sites
Even if you explain how the web works, it can still be a good idea to lock down certain websites to protect your kids. Gambling sites, websites with explicit content - these are all good to restrict access to. They have no need to visit places like these, and you don’t need to give them the chance. These are websites that they are too young to interact with, and sometimes the most sensible thing you can do is block them off.
Overall, these are just a handful of the things you can do to keep your kids safe online. It’s not always the easiest thing on the planet to do, but it does get easier with time. If you remember that your kids are going to find their way online eventually, you can start to figure out how you can protect them. It is often just a case of restricting access but explaining why. You need to treat your kids like grown ups if you want them to behave as such. No one likes to be told the internet isn’t a safe place all the time, but it’s a conversation which just needs to be had.