As part of an ongoing series this week about online and mobile safety, Family Online Safety Institute CEO, Stephen Balkam, is here to provide tips to help keep your family safer online. In my recent interview Stephen talked about mobile safety, Facebook, factors to consider if you’re thinking about giving your child a cell phone, and limiting screentime and safe online gaming over winter break. Today he’s providing tips on how we, as parents, can model good online behaviors.
Tech Savvy Mama: How can parents model good digital citizenship?
Stephen Balkam: This year FOSI and Pew released a study on teens’ experiences on social networking sites and one of the most heartening findings was that parents are the number one source where kids learn about what is appropriate and inappropriate digital behavior. This means that parents can and should take a very active role in modeling good digital citizenship.
Parents should strive to spend quality time with their kids in which they aren’t distracted by their gadgets. We can’t expect our kids to pay attention and not text while we are talking if we text and talk as well.
Parents should also talk to their kids about how they read terms and agreements every time they download an app or sign up for an online account.
Finally, parents should respect age limits and restrictions of certain sites and not assist their children in accessing sites that they deem inappropriate.
This is part of a series of posts from my interview with Stephen Balkam, CEO of FOSI. Additional topics from this week included:
• Advice for monitoring screen time and tips for online gaming
No compensation was received for this post or in the series.
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Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
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