This week is Childrens Mental Health Week (5th-10th February) and Tuesday was Safer Internet Day (6th February). In this blog Judah Racham, Place2Be’s Programme Leader for Family Work, gives his tips for parents and carers on navigating online safety.
In recent years, conversations around how to keep my children safe online have become more frequent in our household. I admit that I have not always found this an easy conversation to have. I acknowledge that there are many positives for children having access to the internet. Most notably, there is a wealth of information that they can now access easily, which can be especially beneficial for their education. But I have also had increased concerns about what my children may be exposed to on the internet and so I have looked for advice from various places, trying to find a solution that works best for me and my family.
There are a few things that I have found helpful for navigating safer internet use for my children, some of which I stumbled on just through trial and error.
The first thing we did was to have some open and honest discussions about online safety with our children. This was a bit easier for me as my children are all at an age where we could talk about the risks of being online; and they gave their opinions about this from the things they experience when doing things like gaming.
We also talked about rules for internet use at home and things that could be put in place at home to reduce some of the risks. Something we agreed on from the outset was that when using a device, my children would need to sit in a place where we could see the screen and what was being accessed. I told my children that this was non-negotiable for me, and I was pleasantly surprised that there were no objections from my usually very vocal boys.
Another thing we did was to become more aware of what the internet provider could do to block inappropriate content with our internet access. This was something that made me feel a lot more in control over what my boys might access online.
I have also become more interested and involved with the online games that my boys are playing. I found that this is a great way of connecting with them but also a way for them to share what they are experiencing online, especially when it comes to communicating with other gamers. It was a real eye-opener for me to see how many times we could play a simple online football game and receive so many random messages from people we didn’t know.
We have also been quite vigilant about the amount of time that the boys spend online and tried to place some reasonable limits on this. This was not as easy as it sounds, but with a bit of negotiation, we managed to encourage our boys to take time away from the online world to pursue their other interests as well.
