Online Safety for Kids. Advices for Adults

photo by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/Review

‘Talking with Kids about Being Online’, May 2018 – promoted by the First Lady Melania Trump within the international ‘Be Best’ Campaign (it can be downloaded FREE of charge from here)

The raise of technologies and Internet are meant to improve our quality of life. Nowadays, we can book, study and pay online – which saves us lots of time. People with disabilities find Internet connected devices and different downloaded applications as being useful tools that improve their life quality. It looks like the virtual world was created by man, in order to improve some aspects of the real life that technology can improve and/or facilitate. Therefore, if the virtual world is some kind of reflection of the real world, it means that what we call a ‘villain’ in the real world, it would most probably be a ‘scammer’, a ‘trafficker’ etc. in the virtual one. So, since we are all simultaneously exposed to both the benefits and the dangers of the online connection of our computers and mobile devices, what to do in order for us to enjoy mostly the benefits and protect the children and ourselves from the online dangers?  

The booklet ‘Talking with Kids about Being Online’ issued by the U.S. Federal Free Trade Commission and promoted by the First Lady Melania Trump within the international ‘Be Best’ campaign – that focuses on the well being of children, their safe online exposure and their healthy living away from opioids – presents on the one side, the dangers to which the kids are exposed while online, and on the other side, it suggests the best solutions for adults to protect them.

           Most adults and children build public profiles, share photos/videos, share location, plans, thoughts – and how much is too much is for each of us to decide. This booklet advises us to post what we are comfortable with, without losing sight of the fact that whatever each of us posts can be seen by a large category of people: employers, admission officers, teachers and colleagues, the police, and so on. It warns about the following three issues:

• inappropriate conduct (cyber bullying through bad words/comments that some people would not do in the real world, but somehow they feel more free to do it in the online forgetting about hurting people);
• inappropriate contact (being approached by strangers with bad intentions, such as human traffickers, financial scammers, etc.);
• inappropriate content (violent/hate speech, pornography, etc.).

It is suggested that adults should supervise their children – at least until they are confident – when they are online, to talk to them, to be patient with them especially that ‘[m]ost kids need to hear information repeated, in small doses, for it to sink in’ (p.3).

Adults are advised to teach their children that not everything on Internet is true, that not everybody on Internet is what it seems to be and that certain things must stay private (such as: address, phone number, social security number, credit card number, etc.). The booklet presents some control mechanisms that adults have, in order to protect children in the online. Here are some of the suggestions:

• filtering and/or blocking certain websites, apps or images;
• blocking outgoing content;
• installing browsers with search engines appropriate for children;
• reviewing the list of virtual friends of the child is also a suggested solution, and so on.

These mechanisms of filtering, blocking and installing appropriate browsers are justified by studies pointing that ‘[t]eens who don’t talk about sex with strangers online are less likely to come in contact with predators’ (p.9).

But filters installed on computers do not work on mobile devices. Therefore this booklet also shows the advantages of passwording computers, mobile devices (especially when financial operations are operated from the smartphone), home wireless system and the dangers of the phishing scams – a fraudulent practice of collecting personal and financial details by sending texts, e-mails, pop-ups, attachments to be downloaded or links to click on. It shows how to avoid phishing and where to report it.

To sum up, this booklet is centered on children’ s online safety, but it contains relevant information for adults. I chose to read, review and post it on the occasion of the U.S. Children’s Day – although I’m not a parent myself (at least, not yet!) – because of the great summation of possible dangers and interesting insights on cyber security. As technology is evolving and so is our Internet and technology need that grows with it, I find any piece of cyber security information as being valuable for both adults and children. I gladly discovered that I am doing the right thing when before downloading an application I read the description, the reviews and the other users’ ratings – as, to me, it is the only way to decide whether or not is the application I need. I also found in this booklet the arguments I needed for an online security issue I was already considering for quite some time. All in all, I found the different warnings justified, the advices equally useful and the layout friendly.