There’s a phrase that you should keep in mind when considering your children’s future internet usage: “Don’t panic.”
For kids, the internet is hugely exciting – a place for learning, socialising, playing and creating – but it’s also one with risks such as addiction and cyberbullying. So it’s understandable that parents are nervous about safety, with a July Tesco Mobile survey of 1,000 parents finding that 66.2% are concerned about their child’s safety when giving them their first phone. However, experts believe that it’s possible for both children and parents to find peace of mind when it comes to the internet.
Andy McKenzie is an e-safety adviser who talks to schools and parents about internet safety. He says that rather than being scared or pleading technological ignorance, parents need to talk with their children about internet use so they can guide them towards safe usage. “It’s a careful balance. I don’t want to scare parents, I want to give them advice and make them realise they can manage it,” he says. “It’s not any scarier than the real world.”
As McKenzie acknowledges, it’s inevitable that as children get older they will spend more of their time online, so it’s essential to establish good habits before a child gets too old. For this to happen, the parent needs to know what a child is doing on the internet, what apps they are using and what chat facilities and privacy settings are available. Simply show an interest – there’s a fair chance a younger child will be only too willing to show off their knowledge. What you shouldn’t do is spy on them, which could drive unwelcome behaviour underground. Instead, communicate frequently and spend time with your child while they are online.
“From the start, demonstrate curiosity and have open, healthy conversations, so that by the time children get to adolescence it will be instilled within them,” says McKenzie. “Children need to be exposed to risk if they are to mitigate risk. Parents see it as a technology issue but it isn’t, it’s a behaviour issue – sometimes our children’s behaviour and sometimes the behaviour of other people. There is no such thing as safe and unsafe. An app isn’t dangerous, it’s how it’s used.”
Concerned parents can employ technological solutions such as child-friendly browsers and time controls. While these can assist parenting, they should not be used as a replacement for it. When his son got a smartphone, Nick Shaw, vice-president and general manager of Symantec Norton, talked to him about ransomware and discussed how to behave in communal spaces. “My son didn’t want to put security software on his phone but we went to the app store and used the app-checker to see what each app was doing and all the information it was taking,” says Shaw. “I asked: ‘Why does it need your phone numbers? Why does it need location?’ He now uses the app checker because he understands why it’s there.”
Parents can also lead by example. It’s difficult to tell your child not to share images on social media if you have plastered photographs of them all over Facebook for the past 10 years, or ask them to put their phone down if you spend every five minutes checking emails or social media. Sometimes this may involve pragmatism – perhaps a child could have a private Instagram account for personal photographs as well a public one for images that can be shared more widely. To help them to understand the difference, you may want to consider giving them an easily intelligible rule of thumb, as in the case of Shaw: “I tell them: ‘Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your granny to see.’”
Ultimately, staying calm is the best way to keep your child safe online. While it can feel like incredibly tough terrain to navigate, given that it’s a childhood learning experience you never had to go through yourself, this doesn’t make it something that you can’t cope with. “I can understand why parents are scared,” says Shaw. “But you don’t need to understand how Instagram works, you just need to understand enough to have a conversation. It’s really not as scary as you might think.”
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