As soon as the child begins accessing the internet, you can speak to them about what they are reading. Ask them what they are watching or even who they are communicating with online. Also, you need to keep the conversation growing as they grow older.
It is vital to teach them about their online reputations too.
Keeping Screens and Devices Within your Eyesight
You can always monitor your child’s time online. This is particularly for the younger children. You can keep the computer in a central spot in the home where it is easy to keep an eye on what the child is doing and viewing online.
For the mobile devices, you can set them to forget the Wi-Fi passcodes. Therefore, your children cannot go online without you knowing. You could also try to make a proper agreement that there are no tablets, laptops or gaming in the bedrooms.
For your younger children, you might also consider checking the browser histories after your child has been online to see which sites they are visiting. This approach obviously gets harder as the children grow older and work out how exactly to clear histories which is all the more reason to open the lines of communication regarding internet usage at an early age.
Know Your Parental Controls
Innocent searches online can lead to not-so-innocent results. It is very wise to know how to utilize the parental controls or the search restrictions that are offered by the web browsers. The search restrictions are also provided by the internet service providers and the devices.
For example –the Safe Search filters feature on Google shall block sites with explicit sexual materials. To turn it on, you can go to Settings/Safe search filters. The safe search filters are not one hundred per cent accurate.
However, these parental controls can prevent your child from seeing and accessing most violent materials. Again, paid for security tools and features shall offer extra protection and control.
Knowing Who Your Children’s Online Friends Are
Being one of the best CBSE schools in Dehradun, The Heritage School North Campus suggest you that some people online are definitely not who they say they are. However, children and young people can be alarmingly naïve regarding who they are chatting with if they are not taught to be cyber wise from a very early age.
You can make sure you become friends and make contacts within your child’s social media circles. Ensure you totally monitor the posts. Your children might resist but tell them that it is one of the conditions for you to allow them access.
You can lead by examples. Always model the kind of positive online behaviour you would like your children to utilize. If they see you are being cautious and respectable whenever you are online, they are far more likely to follow in your footsteps.
Yes, this also involves limiting your own screen timings.