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Children’s Online Safety 101: Tips for Parents Amid Concerns



The opportunities that are presented to children online are seemingly endless. Many of them provide enriching and educational experiences--but allowing our kids to learn and socialize online comes with benefits as well as risks.

Recently, there has been much concern over data privacy and children’s safety, especially in the first few months of 2019. The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) has curated this helpful resource for parents to take appropriate steps to protect children.
  1. Review any apps before your child downloads it. Law enforcement officials in Ohio and Alabama released a list of fourteen apps that parents should be aware of,  known for bullying, sharing location information, storing data, and talking to strangers. The list includes popular apps such as Bumble, Live.Me, Snapchat, Holla, Whisper, Ask.FM, and Calculator%.

    In addition, some apps that are presumed harmless have become notorious for “accidental in-app purchases,” including Facebookin-app games and the extremely popular Fortnite. To avoid accidental purchases made by your children, the Fortnite article linked above includes tips, such as adjusting credit card settings to notify you every time a purchase is made, conduct research on the game from other parents and sources, setting rules for spending in games, and restricting in-app purchase features.
  2. Choose the strictest privacy settings available. Whether it’s a phone’s, computer’s, or website’s privacy options, ensure that you maintain the most control of your children’s devices. To adjust your devices’ privacy settings, view thisarticle from Common Sense Media. For a brief how-to on adjusting privacy settings on social media, refer to thisarticle.
  3. Utilize parental controls for your children’s content viewing platforms. YouTube Kids has been criticized in the media recently because there have been instances of children’s videos on the platform that were found to contain clips promoting and instructing suicide in the middle of such videos. While the platform has admitted that it cannot manually review all videos, most content service providers, including YouTube, have parentalcontrol settings that parents may utilize to protect their children from the devices’ end. We recommend going to your settings and turning “Restricted Mode” on if you have little ones using your device. Restricted Mode will hide videos that may contain inappropriate content flagged by users. However, while this should help you avoid most inappropriate content, no automated filter is a replacement for parental supervision. 

    You can also check out this step-by-stepguide to making YouTube Kids safer for your kids. The app gives the option to choose whether you want your children to explore all of YouTube Kids, or be limited to channels that are “verified” by the company. Parents can also sign-in to Google to save personalized lists of approved videos and channels, and to create up to eight individual profiles for children.
  4. Stay informed and up-to-date on the apps kids are using. It will give you a taste for what your children might want to use and download, as well as a head-start to reviewing and determining whether the app is alright to use.
  5. Talk to your children about what it means to use apps and social media. There are risks as well as rewards; it’s important to inform children of both sides so they understand what privacy means from an early age so they can make informed judgments. The FTC has put out a helpful guide to talking to your children about online safety. The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) also provides helpful resources under their Good Digital Parenting initiative.
Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash


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