The Internet is an incredible resource full of fascinating content and endless knowledge. But as we all know, it can be a dangerous place – especially for kids and teenagers. Read on for some excellent tips you can use to make sure your children enjoy the Internet in a secure and safe way.
As an adult, you’re most likely very aware of how to protect your privacy and personal information online – as well as the shady pitfalls and traps to avoid while surfing the web. But generally, most young adolescents are mostly just focused on sharing their lives and connecting with friends. Safety is too often their last priority, though it should be one of their first.
Here are some simple Internet safety rules that you can use to keep your children safe on the web – some of which adults will likely find useful as well!
1. Use the privacy settings on social network platforms.
Many social networks have completely public settings – meaning that anything your teen or child posts is visible to other Internet users! If your children are social media users, it’s a good idea to sit down with them and ensure all their social media accounts utilize privacy settings that keep their personal posts and information from being accessed by any predators or hackers.
Let’s take a look at Facebook’s settings as an example of the tools at your disposal.
If you want to secure your child’s Facebook account, you can start by examining Facebook’s helpful privacy guide. A quick scan of this will shed light on how Facebook’s preferences work, what is visible to the outside world, how to delete posts and information, etc.
Next, you’ll want to go into the privacy settings on your child’s Facebook account to make sure everything is set up properly – i.e., that your child isn’t at risk because some switch you didn’t know about is toggled the wrong way.
(Note that you can take similar steps to the below to secure other social media accounts, usually by navigating to Settings.)
You can check your privacy preferences on Facebook by going into Settings. Get there by clicking this link or hitting the down arrow on the right-hand side of the top blue bar on your page, then clicking “Settings” on the dropdown menu.
Once you’re there, you’ll be able to navigate through a couple of settings under different categories on the left-hand side. You can make edits here by hitting “Edit” or clicking the blue pencil icon on the right-hand side of the screen in each row.
Read on and we’ll show you which settings will give your kids the maximum preferred level of privacy on Facebook.
- Under Privacy → Your Activity, you can change who can see your activity.
- For the question “Who can see your future posts?” set the setting to
- Next to “Review all your posts and things you’re tagged in,” you can click Review Activity Log to see everything you’ve posted, liked, commented on, etc., and make adjustments or delete anything you see.
- Next to “Limit The Audience for Old Posts on Your Timeline,” you can click the Limit Past Posts button and apply new settings to all your posts going back.
- Under Privacy → How People Find and Contact You, we recommend the following settings for kids and teens:
- Under “Who can send you friend requests?” select Friends of Friends.
- Under “Who can see your friends list?” select Only Me.
- Under “Who can look you up using the email address you provided?” select
- Under “Who can look you up using the phone number you provided?” select
- Under “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?” uncheck the box.
- Under Timeline and Tagging → Timeline, we recommend the following settings for kids and teens:
- Under “Who can post on your timeline?” select (You could select Only Me, but this sort of defeats one of the purposes of Facebook.)
- Under “Who can see what others post on your timeline?” select (Again, you could select Only Me, but this may limit Facebook’s functionality a bit too much. As a parent, it’s your decision.)
- Under “Allow post sharing to stories?” select Disabled.
- Under “Hide comments containing certain words from your timeline,” add any words you don’t want to have appear in other people’s comments on your timeline. You can even add a .csv file with a whole library of words you want to hide.
- Under Timeline and Tagging → Tagging, we recommend the following settings for kids and teens:
- Under “Who can see posts you’re tagged in on your timeline?” select Friends or Only Me.
- Under “When you’re tagged in a post, who do you want to add to the audience of the post if they can’t already see it?” select Only Me.
- Under Timeline and Tagging → Review, we suggest the following settings for kids and teens.
- Under “Review posts you’re tagged in before the post appears on your timeline?” select
- Under “Review tags people add to your posts before the tags appear on Facebook?” select
You can also disable Facebook tracking your location by accessing the settings on the Facebook app on your device.
Facebook Privacy Checkup
Finally, Facebook also lets you do a quick privacy checkup for some of these and other essentials. Just click the “?” bubble on the right-hand side of the bar on top of the user interface and Facebook will walk you through your preferred privacy settings on:
- Who can view your posts
- What personal information is viewable by the public
- Who can see the apps you use
Go through these settings from time to time to make sure your child’s account is secure as is appropriate for their age. It’s never a bad idea to do a quick checkup!
2. Never post or send personal information such as your phone number, address or location.
Even if you have the maximum level of technology privacy settings, it’s very important that your children know never to post personal and private information. You might have locked your child’s social media accounts behind the highest level of privacy permissions, but that won’t stop someone from taking a screenshot of their posts and sharing it with an unintended or public audience.
If those posts happen to contain personal information your child thought was safe, it could put your child or your family in danger.
This is especially important on popular mobile apps like Snapchat or Instagram, which are very popular among teenagers and tweens because of how fun and viral the visual content on them is. When a teen posts personal and private details on these popular apps, the openness and virality of these platforms means said info can easily fall into the wrong hands. As a result, it’s very important for young people to remember that once posted, personal information can instantly become public.
Take Snapchat, for instance. It’s an app that allows users to send photos and videos messages to each other. The images and videos are theoretically supposed to disappear in seconds, so some teens and tweens may feel a false sense of security about the privacy of what they share.
It’s important to remind your child that a simple screenshot capture can forever immortalize what they send – even if they want it to remain private. Moreover, Snapchat has had its fair share of hacking incidents in the past – leading to 100,000 stolen user pictures and 4.6 million leaked user names and numbers.
Making sure your child does not share private details in their photo or video posts is also important for Instagram. Moreover, with Instagram, you can protect your kids’ online privacy and safety by following Tip 1 above to make sure their privacy settings are set to only allow friends they know to see the images – and their geo-location feature is turned off.
The Binary Tattoo YouTube channel has excellent videos on app safety for kids and teens, including this one on Instagram:
By the same token, you should encourage your child to check with you before sharing videos or images they plan to post online. Once they share visual content, these images and videos are no longer exclusively theirs – they’re part of the Internet ecosystem and are out of their full control.
3. Don’t include personal information in your screen name.
When choosing a screen name or alias on websites, it’s very important to remind your child not to include their last name or date of birth. They may think doing so is harmless, but it can allow people they don’t know or no longer want to interact with to discover their identity and private information.
Encourage your child to maintain full privacy in online settings – down to their user names!
4. Never share your passwords.
Your child or teen may like to share their account passwords with close friends. Doing so might seem like no big deal, but it puts their accounts – and all the personal information on them – at risk. And if your child uses the same or a similar password across different platforms, it could jeopardize a whole bunch of accounts they might not initially think of – but cause disaster nonetheless.
Once their password is out of their hands, it’s impossible to keep it secret – the information might spread from person to person and end up in the hands of someone nefarious. The last thing anyone wants is for a complete stranger to access your children’s personal profiles – or, worst-case scenario, for your child to completely lose access to their accounts (and everything on them) once that outsider changes the password.
Also, along this note, remind your child to always log out of any accounts they’ve accessed when using a public computer. It’s easy to forget, but could be even more dangerous than sharing a password with a friend.
5. Never agree to meet or give information to anyone you first “met” on the Internet.
It’s important your child understands that there are many fake accounts out there targeted at children, as well as associated dangers when communicating with someone they only know through the online world. These risks range from “catphishing” (when people set up fake accounts to lure people into freely giving over personal details) to actual physical dangers associated with setting up meetings with strangers.
In fact, in 2015, it was estimated that 11.2 percent of Facebook accounts, 10 percent of Instagram accounts and 8.5 percent of Twitter accounts were fake – in spite of efforts to fight fake profiles.
Encourage an open dialogue with your child and ask them to tell you anytime they receive a first-time meeting or information request with someone they met online. The person on the other end may not be what they seem!
6. Never send or respond to rude or mean messages or emails.
Encourage your child to always take the higher ground when messaging with someone under tense (or any) circumstances. Tell them that if they ever receive a rude or inappropriate communication, just to ignore it. Remind your children that the messages they send back via text and email can never be erased on the other end, and they can easily be shared – with anyone.
If the hurtful messages persist, you and your child should promptly delete them and block the individual harassing them to prevent further communication.
Cyber bullying is a huge concern in today’s world. According to recent data, over half of adolescents have been bullied online. Yet only 1 in 10 teens tell a parent if they have been a cyber bully victim – so be sure to establish open dialogue with your child early on and always be ready and open to speak with them about their online activities. Don’t have them face the Internet alone!
7. Never download or install unknown software or applications.
It’s important to advise your kids on what they should or shouldn’t download to their (or your) devices. (Even we adults are often duped by fake software and spam, so imagine how it must be for kids!)
The best practice is to only download files from trusted sources. When in doubt, install a site advisor like Web of Trust or Norton Safe Web to help decide if a download site is trustworthy or not.
As an extra precaution, encourage your children to always consult you before downloading any unfamiliar files.
8. Exercise extreme caution when buying online.
The Internet opens a whole world of shopping opportunities for tweens and teens, but it also requires a great deal of caution and safe spending.
According to Statistic Brain’s Credit Card Fraud Statistics, of the 10 percent of Americans that have been the victims of credit card fraud, for 48 percent the initial point of fraud was email and for 12 percent it was a website – meaning 60 percent of credit card fraud begins online.
Encourage your teen to always consult you before making any kinds of purchases online. In addition, when purchasing from a site, make sure it’s from a reliable, trusted vendor and utilizes encryption. Encryption is important because it converts data to an unreadable format that can only be decoded using a special “decoding key” on the other end – which helps keep unwanted third parties out.
How can you tell if a site is encrypted? If the URL begins with “HTTPS,” the site is encrypted and probably safe for online purchases. If there’s no S at the end of the HTTP, it means the site could be unencrypted, leaving your family’s sensitive data vulnerable to third-party access.
Of course, if you’re on a shared hotspot, someone else on the network could still snoop in on what you’re doing, regardless of whether the site is encrypted. Under these circumstances, connecting with a VPN provides a secure, bank-level encrypted Internet connection to add an extra layer of security and prevent online identity theft.
9. Search safely with “Safe Search” settings and protective filters.
Search engines can open a world of amazing knowledge for your child, but they can also expose them to less-than-PG content.
There are many great practices to keep your family computer safe for your kids when they’re browsing on the web, including keeping the computer in an open area, not allowing computers or laptops in your kids’ bedrooms, and not allowing your children to use the Internet after you’ve gone to bed at night.
One surefire way to monitor while you’re not around is to make sure all search engines are pre-set for “Safe Search” and to install reliable parental control software.
In addition to turning on Safe Search in your browsers, you can also open special safe browsers for your kids. Safesearchkids.com, for instance, offers a great safe Google and YouTube search engine for kids.
And to make extra sure your children are not exposed to any questionable content, parental control software can allow you to filter inappropriate websites as well as block inappropriate banner ads on webpages.
Digital Trends published an excellent article on online parental control measures that covers built-in features for Windows and Mac, as well as recommended desktop programs, browsers and extensions.
Despite all precautions, measures and best intentions, the Internet is such a vast resource that completely shielding your child may not always be possible. If your child or teenager ever encounters any kind of inappropriate content, make sure they know that they should feel comfortable to come and tell you right away.
10. Be careful about the information you share and what you access over public Wi-Fi.
Public Wi-Fi hotspots may seem safe, but they can often be ground zero for cybercriminal attacks. Why? These networks are usually completely unsecured, meaning snoopers can easily peer into your online activity – without you even knowing. These snoopers can be outside parties or even sitting over your shoulder on the same network, scanning your web activity for useful information they can then use to scam or hack you or your kids.
If your teenager is traveling or even meeting friends at a coffee shop with public Wi-Fi, encourage them to browse over these hotspots with a VPN. Using one will direct all their traffic through a secure, encrypted “tunnel” connection and help keep their personal information safe.
At SaferVPN, we understand the importance of Internet safety, privacy and security for the entire family – which is why we offer a discounted plan for multiple devices.
We also offer native apps for iOS and Android so that safe, encrypted browsing can take place seamlessly on any of your family’s mobile phones and tablets.
If you haven’t tried our VPN service and would like to, you can enjoy a free trial today.
We hope you find these tips helpful in guiding your kids to use the Internet in a healthy, responsible and safe way. If you have any questions or recommendations on how to provide the best online safety for your child or teen, please connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
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