Internet Safety for Kids 4 Ways to Keep Your Kids Safe Online

Are you a parent? If you are, there will likely come a point in time when your child wants or needs to use the internet. Although the internet can be used for research only, there are many children and teenagers who also use the internet to make new friends or to communicate with their current friends. Unfortunately, this can be dangerous.

The good news is that there are a few easy ways that you can help to keep your child safe when they use the internet. Four of these ways are highlighted below for your convenience.

1 – Discuss Internet Safety with Your Child

Have you already had the internet safety talk with your child or teenager? If you haven’t, this is a talk that you will soon want to have. Unfortunately, many children do not know about the dangers that lurk online, including internet predators, until it is too late. That is why it is important that you discuss internet safety with your child.

As for what you should say, be sure to tell them what you expect of them. Set rules for using the internet in your home. Also, let your child know what they should do if they are approached by an older stranger online, an outright internet predator, or if they are harassed by peers online. This should involve saving all documents, as opposed to just deleting them from the screen, talking to you, contacting the police, or speaking to a trusted adult at school.

2 – Set Clear Ground Rules

As it was previously stated, an important part of talking about internet safety with your child is to set rules for computer and internet use. What you will want to do is be realistic, but safe with your rules. For example, you may not want to outright ban the internet altogether in your home. Instead, ban certain websites that you feel are too dangerous or unsafe. If you don’t want your child to use internet chat rooms or social networking websites, block them only. Other rules should involve not trading personal information online and not posting personal videos or pictures online.

3 – Monitor Your Child’s Use of the Internet

Monitoring your child’s use of the internet is another great way that you can go about keeping them safe online. Even if you do talk to your child about internet safety, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will listen or follow your rules. That is why it is important for you to do checking. What you can do is walk up to the computer and ask your child what they are doing or watch them for a few minutes.

Another easy way that you can monitor your child’s use of the internet is by checking the internet history on your computer. If you are using Internet Explorer as your internet browser, checking is really easy and it should only take you a few minutes. Start by opening up a new internet window. Along the top of the page, you will see a number of icons. Click on the one with the green arrow and clock. You should be able to see what websites your child visited within the past few days or even weeks.

4 – Use Parental Controls

If you use Internet Explorer and there is a good chance that you do, parental controls are built in for you. You can find them by altering your internet options. You can block websites that you don’t want your child to see, create a password so that you and you alone can override those blocks, and do so much more.

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