One of the common threads heard throughout last week’s Family Online Safety Institute’s Annual Conference was about whose role it is to teach online safety. It was a topic that was mentioned in keynotes, general sessions, on our panel, and posed to me via Twitter.
Whose responsibility is it to teach online safety?
Is it a parental responsibility? Should teachers be educating kids about online safety issues? Do we enlist the help of tools like parental controls, location based services, and online monitoring developed by companies?
The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Education about such issues needs to be part of a multi-prong approach where the information is disseminated through a variety of different channels in order to reach today’s kids.
So what can we do? Parents can:
- Be present and find a balance between on and offline. William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, spoke about his family’s digital Sabbath where they unplug from the internet on the weekends. It sounds difficult but his family is in the fourth year of doing so and during his panel he found that “we’re better digital people because we regularly go away.” Maybe you don’t need to cut off your internet connectivity for a whole day and start cold turkey but start small. Consider having a place to park all cell phones the minute you walk in the door and leave them there until you leave the house.
- Create open lines of communication and listen for those little nuggets in the conversation that can be used as teachable moments that can be used as conversation starters about the good and bad things that are part of a child’s daily life. Let’s be honest- talking about topics like porn and bullying, whether on or offline, aren’t fun but can certainly be more difficult when you don’t make time to talk.
- Model good digital citizenship and responsible device use. Model the kinds of behaviors you expect from your children. If you don’t want your child to be using their cell phone at home, make a point of finding a place to park family phones when you walk in the door. Mine lives in our charging closet. It’s the reason why I miss texts from friends when I’m at home. I never have my phone with me when I’m at home. Sorry!
- Be willing to learn with your children.Take the time to sign up for a new website and explore it together. Research cell phones as a family. Ask your kids about what they’re doing to let them be the experts.
- Talk to other parents. Often times if you have a parenting quandary, chance are another family is facing the same dilemma. Learn together as a community to benefit all kids and share great resources because it truly does take a village!
Coming soon: free resources to keep families safe whether using social networking tools, mobile devices, or gaming.
Thanks to AT&T for sponsoring one day of my attendance at the conference. As a speaker, my conference pass was provided. All opinions are my own.
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Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
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