5 Tips To Keep Your Kids Safe Online

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

I love technology – the ability to have limitless knowledge at your fingertips and ways to keep connected with my friends and family – I love sharing pictures online with you and catching up on my favorite TV shows – sometimes it’s seriously hard to remember what life was like before all of this technology.

The girls are getting older and things like playing games and surfing the internet are things that they want to do – and even though I’m frequently online for inspiration I've been very cautious about how much technology I let them have – for two reasons,

1.  Because I don’t want them to be dependent on it for information or entertainment (yes, I’m that mom who makes you look it up in a dictionary or play a board game) and 
2. I’m careful about what they see – I want to make sure they are always safe, because let’s face it – there’s a lot of not-so-good things online too.

I've put off the internet safety conversation for quite a while – Anika knew some rules, but I never sat down and made everything ‘official’ until Emma came home a couple weeks ago with a paper from school with information for a learning website with her own special log in so that she could practice her reading, writing and math with fun interactive lessons.

So we sat down.

Our rules may vary from yours, but whatever household rules you have it’s important to just set them and make sure that everyone in the house knows.

1.  Set a time limit and stick to it.
2. Internet usage is only allowed in the kitchen or living room – in other words in a place that’s always supervised.
3. They are only allowed to look at approved websites, and need to ask before looking at other things.
4. No social media until they are at the ‘approved’ age. This one is a bit harder when you have older kids – Anika is at the age where a lot of her friends are joining Facebook and Twitter, but I’ve told her no social media until she’s 13 – after all, that’s  Facebook’s policy and I don’t want to teach her that it’s okay to lie about your age.
5. Ask questions and talk! Technology should be a fun learning experience for kids – and it can open the door for lots of conversations and inspiration for everyone!

Most of you know by now that I’m pretty involved in our school, and have been the President of our Parent Teacher Organization for a while now (this is my second year) so I was really excited when I heard that the National PTA has partnered with LifeLock to share awesome ways families can create an open, evolving conversation about positive, safe decisions when using digital tools through their #ShareAwesome campaign. 

It’s goal is to build an understanding among parents and students that no matter the device, the app or the networking site – the skills we need to be safe and positive online are similar to what you need offline, and to make it fun there are holding a contest! Share the hashtag #ShareAwesome on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Students who are old enough for social media can enter a photo between September 15 – November 30, 2014 will be eligible to win fantastic prizes, including tablets and a $2,500 scholarship! Visit ShareAwesomeNow.org to learn more.

~Melissa

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.