How To Prepare Your Children For The Online World

Whatever way you approach giving your child access to the internet now, bear in mind you will have to rethink it in the future. What suits now won’t work when they are 14 or older, and need a bit more freedom.

Above all, it’s not about limiting their access to resources online, but more about giving them the skills to figure out what is good and not so good online.

Advice for parents

Talk to your child

Prepare them early, but in an age-appropriate way. There is no point in scaring them at eight or nine, but you can start to discuss boundaries.

Use parental controls and privacy settings

Familiarise yourself with them. They may not weed everything out, but they will certainly stop your child from accidentally stumbling across inappropriate content. You may also want to look at disabling geolocation services. And remember, children are more involved with technology, so they may be more tech savvy than you think in a short space of time. In other words, check back regularly to make sure they haven’t disabled the parental controls.