KEEPING
SAFE ONLINE
that you can put in place at home, to help keep your youngest children safe online.
The best way to keep your family safe online, and to understand your child’s internet use, is to use technology and the internet together. Get to know how a game or device works by exploring it as a family and finding where the main settings and safety features are.
In the same way that you set boundaries for most areas of your children’s lives, establish your expectations with technology use and online activities. Creating a family agreement is a useful step, which might include time spent online, where and when devices can be used and what to do if they see something upsetting. You can find the Childnet Family Agreement at www.childnet.com/have-a-conversation.
We recommend that you always supervise a young child when they are online as they may stumble across something which could worry, upset or confuse them. Since the internet can be accessed from a number of devices and many of these are portable, we would advise you to keep family and child devices in a busy part of your home e.g. the living room or kitchen. This makes it easier for you to be involved in their technology use and you are right there to answer any questions and help them.
Young children can be enthusiastic users of technology but try to encourage a healthy mix of online and offline activities. There are some strategies that can be used to help manage the time your child spends online, such as setting time limits or using time limiting tools, designating weekly times to use the internet together, or removing portable devices from your child’s bedroom at night to avoid tiredness.
Make use of parental controls and filters which can be used on your home internet, devices, phone networks and online services such as Netflix and YouTube. Visit the Parents’ Guide to Technology on the UK Safer Internet Centre website to find out how to set up controls on a device www.saferinternet.org.uk/parent-tech. Visit www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls to find out how you can set up controls on your home internet, phone network and online services such as Netflix. Parental controls will work best in combination with supervision and engagement to help your child understand how to stay safe online. As your child grows and develops, so do their online needs, therefore you may want to periodically review your parental controls to accommodate this. Always remember to choose a strong password and do not share it with your child.