Ten Online Safety Tips for Parents and Teachers

Kids today are fascinated by the Internet and can be surprisingly skilled when it comes to using a computer. It’s for this reason that parents and teachers should be aware of the potential dangers presented by the Internet, including online predators, cyber bullies, con artists, even friends - and how to talk to their children/students about avoiding online traps.

Good communication is the key to online safety – parents and teachers should become allies to openly discuss various aspects concerning safety as children spend more time online, at home and in school. Of course, it’s up to parents and teachers to discuss the appropriate amount of information to disclose in each case. Here are a few points of conversation that parents and teachers can use to start a dialogue.

• Parental controls are an important part of staying safe online. They should be openly discussed with children so everyone understands exactly how these services work to shield the entire family from Web dangers. Children don’t like to feel as if they’re being spied upon.
• PCs should be placed in an area where an adult can keep an eye on the monitor, for example, in the living room.
• When creating accounts for social online communities like Facebook®, parents/teachers should study each site’s privacy features and compile lists of trustworthy individuals with whom children are safe to communicate with online.
• Under no circumstance should children meet people they don’t know.
• Teach children to always end conversations they find uncomfortable, and how to do so. Should someone on the Web – even a friend - make them feel scared, confused, trapped, offended or threatened, make sure they know to find an adult to talk to about what happened, and how to stay safe.
• Help children identify emails that contain spam, obscene or aggressive messages, and make sure they know to refrain from forwarding these kinds of emails or chain messages to friends.
• Parents/teachers should regularly search children’s names together in a search engine to see what comes up. They may see information such as blogs they may have, communities they’re active in, and family background – this also gives children a sense of how information is shared online.
• Know the chat lingo, i.e. P911 - my parents are coming; PA - parent alert; PAL - parents are listening; TAW - teachers are watching.
• During activities that require PC usage in class, students should be closely supervised. If they suddenly turn off the PC, quickly change windows, or laugh while in groups during lab hours, then teachers should look for inappropriate sites.
• And finally, students and children should understand that not everything they see or hear on the Internet is true. Information people give about themselves is not always trustworthy.