Anyone born post-1990s, you have or you will grow up using computers as if they were second nature. We don’t even think twice about it. How alien our world is to all previous generations. With this new world come a few challenges that we have to understand in order to defeat. Online safety is an incredibly hot topic at the moment. We could be going through a major phase in society whereby, online safety is argued and debated in a more philosophical manner than ever before. Giant tech corporations are being investigated by governments over privacy and bias leanings, and more is known of hacking than ever before. Bringing up children in this kind of world, parents have to make sure they’re teaching children about modern online safety Here are some things parents can do and teach, to protect their children.
Everything is tracked
For the interest of browser engines and also national security, everything you do online is tracked and recorded. If you turned on your laptop today and made a few searched in Google or watched a video on YouTube, the government knows about it. This is because since the early 2000s, security agencies have been allowed to silently track searches and use various methods of investigation to scour our online history. This is to find and stop terrorism before it can happen in the real world. But children need to know this before they search for silly things. Words like ‘bomb’ and ‘gun’ will automatically be shortlisted in the NSA records. So, ask your children to be careful of the things they search for as everything is tracked. If they wouldn’t do it in front of you then it’s not wise. Keep that as a general rule.
Good password practice
As your children grow up, they will begin to have more online accounts. Whether it be for games, forums, schools, colleges, clothing brands, technology brands etc, they will start to build online profiles to use their accounts. Show them some of these General safety tips such as how to create complex passwords. A good password involves a mixture of numbers, letters and symbols. It should also be something that is not directly connected to the person, such as name, address, birthday or age. Excellent password practice involves never telling anyone else the password, making sure that no one is watching you type it in and changing the password every few weeks or a couple of months. This way hackers never get close as the target always gets a little further every time they get close.
Unknown messages
Phishing is alive and well. Spam messages are still being sent out to random people and email scams are still catching out innocent people. Teach your children about spam and scam emails so that they won’t become a victim as they begin to use email more and more.
It’s your job as a parent to teach your children about online safety. They’re growing up in a world that is very complex and at times dangerous. Children are more vulnerable to online hacks than other age groups.
