Advice on How to Keep your Children Safe Online.
#Safety Tip 1
Ask your child to show you their favourite things to do online and show an interest in what they do.
Talk to your child about the sites they visit, the friends they have, how they communicate with these friends and the information they share.
Please click this guide for support with conversation starters.
#Safety Tip 2
Set rules and boundaries. This will depend on your child’s age but you may wish to consider the amount of time they spend online, when they can go online, websites they can visit, the friends they have, the sharing of images and videos and how to treat people online. Not to post anything online that you wouldn’t say face to face. You may also wish to consider using computers and devices in shared family rooms and not allowing their use at bed time.
Follow this link for advice on screen time:
https://www.childnet.com/parents-and-carers/hot-topics/screen-time-boundaries
#Safety Tip 3
Online games, movies and social network sites often have minimum age restrictions. Age limits are there to keep children safe. You shouldn't feel pressurised into letting your child sign up to websites that you feel they are too young for or are against age restrictions.
The Parent Info website gives you lots of information about PEGI ratings and how they work.
Commonsense Media is a site dedicated to re-viewing the content of games and movies to provide parental advice.
#Safety Tip 4
Set parental controls on devices to filter, restrict and monitor content. Ensure the device has good anti-virus software. Internet service providers provide controls to help filter and restrict content. Laptops, phones, tablets, games consoles and other devices that connect to the internet have settings to activate parental controls. All children's passwords should be shared with their parents. Check privacy settings are at the highest level.
Find out how to use and apply parental controls to popular games consoles. Get information on age ratings and the different games available.
Useful links:
- ask about games from the VSC Rating Board - helping families make sense of video games
- PlayStation safety settings
- Nintendo Switch parental controls
- X-Box core family safety feature
- Xbox 360 - security settings advice
- Xbox One - security settings advice
#Safety Tip 5
Talk to your child about what to do if they see inappropriate content or are contacted by someone that worries them, OR if they know this is happening to a friend. Advise your children to tell someone that they trust, for example a parent, carer, relative or a teacher. Stress to them that they will not be in trouble.
This is a link to the ‘Report Abuse’ page where anyone can report issues they have online: https://www.ceop.police.uk/ceop-reporting
For information about cyberbullying go to https://www.bullying.co.uk/cyberbullying
#Safety Tip 6
Try to keep as up to date as possible. Know what devices/games/websites your children are using. Use these websites to understand how to keep your children safe online.
https://www.connectsafely.org/parentguides
https://www.childnet.com/parents-and-carers/hot-topics
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety