I have to say that I was surprised when parents at my daughter’s elementary school expressed an interest in a talk from a professional about social media, cyberbullying and online safety for their kids. I honestly thought these would be issues we’d be dealing with when our kids become teenagers. I guess this is a sign of our times. Elementary school kids regularly go online and parents want to understand how to safeguard their kids online.
Our eight-year-old does not have a Facebook account, she is not allowed to surf the net on her own and we have white-listed a group of web sites that she can use. I was curious to find out what else I needed to be aware of, so I went to the talk by a local parenting expert.
Most of the points made were common sense – have the computer your child uses in an open space (kitchen, family, living room), talk to them about the things they’d like to do on their computer and speak to them about the dangers (at an age-appropriate level), provide them with rules, etc.
The speaker also pointed to an excellent book that I’ve just started reading. It’s written by Common Sense Media founder and CEO, Jim Steyer and is called “Talking Back to Facebook”. It’s a guide to the major pitfalls relating to kids’ use of media and technology and covers topics such as lack of privacy, attention/addiction problems, cyberbullying and gives advice to parents on how to filter content, preserve good relationships with their kids and make commonsense judgments for their children.
