Online Internet Safety For Kids – Keeping Kids Safe Online

In this blog, we will dive deep into online internet safety for kids and how you can help them. From topics you can teach them to tricks to identifying suspicious sites and links, this blog will cover all you need to help keep children safe while exploring the internet.

How Can Kids Keep Themself Safe:

Keep Personal Information Private:

You should withhold sharing their personal information such as their full name, address, phone number (if they have one), school name or anything that could be used to identify them. Keeping your personal information is a great way to keep yourself safe, you should also avoid using anything that could be used to identify you in your gamertags and online usernames.

Be Cautious with Strangers:

The internet allows you to make contact with everyone regardless of where they are in the world but this also means that you could meet some people that don’t have good intentions. It’s a good thing to keep these people at arm’s length and withdraw from sharing anything that could be used to identify you.

Avoid Clicking on Suspicious Links:

If you receive any links whether it be from your emails or in your direct messages, you should always be wary of suspicious links, first check to see if you recognise and trust the source be careful to look at whatever is sent to you and check to see if it’s the official email/account of the company, then check the content of the email or direct message and see if there are any common spelling mistakes for important messages large companies use automated messages to ensure there are no spelling mistakes. After all these checks if you are still not sure you should seek help from an adult.

Use Trusted Websites and Apps:

On the web, there are over 1 billion websites in the world today and around 46 are created every second (that’s a lot of sites!). Every website is unique and some are more trusted than others, luckily there are a few ways to tell if a website is trusted. One is whether or not it has “https”  inside of the URL (for example https://clubhubuk.co.uk/), and the second way is to see if it’s a brand you or your family recognise or use often. With apps it’s a bit easier as every app that makes it on the Google Play Store has to be passed through verification with strict terms and conditions, however, still be careful with ads.

Keep Communication Open:

At any point should you feel, worried or have some suspicions over a link website or person/account, ensure that you talk about it to an adult and have an adult help you and explain how or why that “thing” is suspicious and why you shouldn’t do what the email says etc is a great way to learn and spot these things.

How You Can Help:

As a parent or carer of kids you want them to understand online internet safety but you also want them to be able to have fun and get the most out of the internet, this section is going to help you understand how you can aid in keeping those kids in your care safe all while allowing them to have fun and leverage the internet to it’s fullest.

Set Clear Rules And Guidelines:

One way that you as a parent or care of the kids is to set clear rules and guidelines, some rules that work well include: only getting to use technology at set times of the day, only getting to use technology for a set amount of time and having to do other things before their allowed on. Things like this not only allow them to explore other things that they can do such as play sports or attend kids’ clubs but they then keep what time they do have on the technology to what they want to do. Children normally want to go on the internet to find something out or to play a certain game, when they finally get the chance to play that game (say you give them 2 hours of electronic time a day) they are more likely to be so excited to do the thing they wanted to do that they’re less likely to go and randomly explore the web.

However, when it comes to education and learning using the web the same tactic doesn’t work and this is where it’s easier to get lost this is where the guidelines come in. You can set guidelines on sites that they can use to find out information things like Wikipedia, BBC Bitesize, Google Scholar and other sites that you know are trustworthy and contain relevant information. You can also set guidelines on how to identify a trustworthy site to ensure that they understand the signs of sites that aren’t trustworthy.

Educate Them About Online Risks And Safety:

An amazing way that you can help the kids in your care is by educating them regularly on the many different topics and aspects of online internet safety such as privacy and personal information protection, cyberbullying prevention, safe social media use and avoiding online scams and phishing. educating children about these topics can help them stay safe and protect their data.

Be Involved In Their Online Activities:

Another great way that you can help them stay safe is to be involved in their activities, for example, let’s say your children are trying to learn more about space you can learn with them about the different aspects and properties of the planets all while keeping them safe. By being directly with them it becomes so much easier to ensure their safe all while bonding with them. For many children, school isn’t seen as something fun and therefore their opinion on learning too gets impacted but knowing that they can learn and adventure with one of their parents can be a crucial part in helping them keep their spark of creativity and curiosity.

Keep Devices In Common Areas:

Another great way you can help protect kids is by adding a rule where they can only play or use devices in certain areas, these areas should be places where there is normally always an adult for example, the living room is a great one. This not only allows you to keep tabs on what the kids are doing on the internet but also allows them to ask you any questions about something they might find.

Use Parental Controls:

The last way that we’re going to talk about here is parental controls, parental controls are a great way to control which sites and where children can go and what sites they can visit. This is a great way to control how and what they can use, from blocking sites to setting up certain apps like screen time manager and app blocking.

We have covered a lot in this blog and we hope that it helped you understand online internet safety for kids and how they can keep themselves self. If you’re looking for ways to get them off of the electronics then take a look at our wide range of kids clubs.