I am really excited to announce that Mommy and Things has teamed up with the computer guys at TechKnowBase.com to give parents of children of all ages some advice on how to keep your kids safe online!
You know all those scary stories about kids you hear on the news? The ones you don't even want to think about? And then your heart gets heavy and you just cringe thinking "what if"? Do a quick count: how many WiFi enabled devices do you have in your home? Smart phones, tablets, iPads, laptops and desktop computers are all included. Some devices you may not even know are capable to connect to the internet, like smart TV's, iPods and even some GPS devices! Your child has access to all of these devices, and since you cannot supervise what they are doing 100% of the time.. we need to learn how to keep our kids safe online!
The internet contains a lot of harmful sites and inappropriate viewing material for children. Children can be easily persuaded to give up their address, phone number or even pictures of themselves. Children 1-18 can have a lot of freedom on the internet and you might not even know. With sites like YouTube it easy to get away from the original video you were watching and onto a completely different video, something that may contain nudity, violence or cursing. Many apps for smart phones or tablets will contain adds, so while your child might be playing a friendly game an add for a dating website might pop up. And all those website that you child goes to play games; they can have chat rooms built in or ask for credit card information. Some sites acknowledge that kids will click on anything, a disguise ads to look kid-friendly, but when clicked downloads a virus onto your computer.
So how do you keep your children safe online? Should they be allowed to have a computer in their bedroom? What are the signs that your child has been viewing inappropriate content? When is a child old enough to have a social media account or talk to friends in a chat room?
The article on TechKnowBase.com answers all of the above questions, as well as giving you a list of kid-friendly products that can help with minimize the chances that your child will run into pop up ads or be able to view inappropriate content!
When is a child old enough to have their own phone/computer/tablet?
When is a child old enough to have a social media account or talk to friends in a chat room?
When is a child old enough to have a social media account or talk to friends in a chat room?
What method do you reccomend to keep kids safe online?
If you haven't heard of TechKnowBase before, they are a great website devoted to giving free information and tutorials on anything computer related. If you are having any kind of problem with you computer visit their question and answer page here, and see if they can help you out! Hopefully this is the first of many articles that Mommy and Things and TechKnowBase team up on!
-Megan from Mommy and Things