Know the importance of internet safety tips for teens.
Since its inception, the internet has made tremendous progress and as we all know, with great power comes great responsibilities.
So we as the parent or educator need to be aware once we provide internet access to our children. If good habits are cultivated in our children and we provide internet safety tips for teens, they will understand how to use the internet wisely and safely.
There are several types of risks that unfortunately our children can get involved in. There can be incidents of cyber-bullying and harassment but don’t react by taking away the internet from them. That’s one reason why our children are reluctant to share their experiences with us. So in these cases give your children the space to explain what happened, then take the necessary steps to support them. You can involve the school authorities as well.
Kids don’t go online, they are ONLINE.
It may be through internet mobile phones, gaming or other interactive devices. Inform kids so they can make intelligent choices whenever the time comes.
Here are a few easy internet safety tips for teens.
- We can also look at different strategies like internet time per day rather than allowing it for the whole day. There is software available which will make the browser unavailable after a specified time limit. Apart from that there are umpteen software which can block unwanted sites and also the objectionable text on different websites.
- You can also control the way the printer is used by your children.
- Finally, there is a federal law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It was created to specifically help protect kids online. The law is such that your child’s personal information cannot be shared across the net without your consent and approval.
Dr. Patricia Fioriello
Dr. Patricia Fioriello is the owner of KidsLearntoBlog.com, a free blog for kids under 13, parents and teachers interested in safe blogging as an educational tool.
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Making sure your home computer is properly configured is one method, there is numerous software programs targeting this audience, you should look for one that allows numerous user accounts, online time limits, content filtering, and usage tracking.
Safest method is not to expose your kids to the internet until they are responsible enough to use it properly, as wonderful as the internet has been over the past decade, it definitely has taken a tool on our youth, just think, 10 years ago how many kids you’d see out playing at your local park vs. today.
Nice post, great reference to socialshield.com this a great resource that is a must for any parent.
Online awareness and monitoring is the key, as mention in the article kids are already online, look at xbox, nintendo ds, playstation, all these devices have online capabilities.
The more we try to restrain out kids the more they are going to pry and be curious about what they are not suppose to look at, online monitoring via some software and education on proper usage is a must.
“It may be through internet mobile phones, gaming or other interactive devices. Inform kids so they can make intelligent choices whenever the time comes.”
I couldn’t agree more because if, as parents, we expect social media sites to be the watch dog, we’re going to be sorely disappointed. For example, Larry Magid (co-director of ConnectSafely) says “Facebook has no resources to help the younger kids, and that’s not good,” he is exactly right, and for kids, Facebook and other “grown up” social media sites are exactly sites they want to be on!
It does appear, however, that private companies are starting to address internet safety for kids, from providing help and information to parents, like socialmediaforkids dot com, to those that provide a safe social networking sites for under aged children and their parents, like everloop dot com, or our own site, MVPStarz dot com.
Some websites may trick people into downloading viruses that can harm a computer or spyware that spies on its users (looks at what they are doing and tells someone else). E-mails can also have harmful files with them as “attachments”.[4]
In Internet Chatrooms, people might be preying on others or trying to stalk or abuse them.
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