Top Internet Safety Rules for Kids

The internet plays a significant role in everyone’s life, whether to keep in touch with friends and family, run a business, or learn new things.

In today’s world, the internet has been an essential factor in everyone’s life, either it is a top businessman, politician, teachers, parents or small kids. Everyone is dependent on the internet.

It is also true that the internet is not free from dangers and risk. In fact, in this digital age, most crimes are taking place virtually, i.e. through the internet. Whether it be scamming people, phishing, bullying or harassing people, kidnapping, and significant crime are done with the internet’s help.

Adults can be aware of the internet’s danger and protect themselves from such hazards. But children may not be aware of the negative aspect of the internet. Hence, it is your responsibility to explain to your kids the negative aspects of the internet.

You can even set some rules for your kids to protect your kids from the internet’s negative aspects. Here I have mentioned some top internet safety rules for kids to help your kids from the Internet’s negative aspects.

Make Your Password Strong and Do Not Share

When your kids are setting a password for any of their accounts, you should encourage them to set a long and unique password.

You should teach them to use numbers, alphabets, sign on their password and create interesting passwords. Also, make sure your kids are creating a password of 12 characters.

When your kids set a long and strong password, there are fewer chances of anyone hacking your accounts.

Likewise, one of the common mistakes children make is by sharing their social media, email, password with their friends. You may have heard common problems among teenagers when they share their passwords with their peers.

Children often share their password as a sign of how strong their friendship is. But children often misuse their peers’ social media or other internet accounts when they have problems with their friends.

For example, when your kid shares their Facebook password with their peers, they may upload any random or inappropriate post. They may also start reading your kid’s messages and start to blackmail them.

Hence, it is your responsibility to teach your kids about the cons of sharing passwords.

Keep Your Information Private

Online phishing is one of the common problems these days. There are lots of scams that you can face on the internet and such scams as you to fill up the form and take your personal information.

For example, sometimes when surfing the internet, some random post might appear in front of your saying you won 1 million and asks you to fill-up the form.

Adults can quickly identify such scams, but children believe it’s real, and they may fill-up the form. Such a form will require you to fill up your personal data, and most of the time; hackers will misuse your data.

However, kids may not know about online phishing, scams and hacking, and they can be the victim of such frauds.

Children can usually provide information like their name, address, phone number, credit card number, bank details, etc. When hackers get this information, they can blackmail children easily.

Therefore, you should teach your kids not to post their private information online.

Do not Download from Random Websites.

Kids usually download many files from the internet, sometimes they download for their school project, and sometimes they download for fun. Children download files, folders, images, videos or any other things that they find interesting from the internet.

However, kids are not aware of copyright issues, malware, and viruses that they can get when they download random files and folders on their computers and phones.

Sometimes, malware and viruses are sent by hackers. And when anyone downloads such malware, they are sent into the computer. And those malware steals personal information from the user’s computer.

While downloading files, you can also get a virus on your computer, slowing down your computer. It can even remove some of your computer files, replicate files and folders, etc.

Before downloading from the internet, kids should be aware of what they are downloading if it is safe or not. You should encourage your kids to do detailed research about things that they are downloading.

Don’t do Online Shopping From Random Websites

These days in the name of online shopping, online scams are increasing. Many websites are creating scams and frauds in the name of online shopping. There are millions of legitimate and fake websites for online shopping. It can be difficult for anyone to distinguish between real and fake websites. Some fake online websites use similar logos and websites to scam people.

In this digital age, children know how to make an online purchase and most of the kids prefer online shopping compared to shopping from the store. But most of the time, when children cannot distinguish between legitimate and fake websites, they can get scammed.

Hence, you should make your kids aware of fake websites. It is your responsibility to teach your kids about the difference between real and fake websites. You should supervise them when they are online shopping.

Likewise, encourage your kids to do detailed research about the website from where they are shopping. Also, ask them to read the reviews and products they will purchase.

One of the best ways to protect your kids from online shopping website scam is by allowing them to shop from limited websites. You can give your kids a list of trusted websites from where they can shop.

Never Trust People You Meet Online

Kids and teenagers love to chat with new people and make new friends. During teenage, kids usually want to know everyone and make lots of friends.

Teenagers feel that the more people they know, the cooler they are in front of their friends. Sometimes teenagers compete among their friends who have more friends.

To make more friends, children start to add random strangers on their social media like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. They may also use chat rooms like Omelege.com, Allo Talk, strangermeetup.com and many more.

The Internet has good and bad people, and children may not always meet good people.

For example, when children use the chatroom, they are connected with a stranger with whom they can chat with. The stranger may not have good intentions, take all the child’s information, ask them to meet up, and blackmail them.

Many children are blackmailed and harassed when they meet or trusted people they meet online. You can also find many fake profiles on social media who claim to be someone else and scam people.

Therefore, you should teach your kids not to trust anyone they meet online. Even if they meet people, they meet online to make sure you are around them.

Think Before You Post

Nowadays, children give more importance to the number of likes they get on social media than the number they get on their studies. Children are obsessed with gaining likes and comments.

You can usually see kids competing with their peers on the number of likes they gain on the internet. Kids these days are obsessed with the number of likes and comments and post anything on the internet.

You can see many teenagers are posting an inappropriate post just to get like. And most of them are not aware of the consequences they might face after posting such posts.

Children should know that once they post a post on the internet, it will forever exist on the internet. Even if you delete the post, it can never be deleted from the server.

Thereby, you should communicate with your kids and ask them to think of the consequences before posting any post online.

Talk to Parents When You are Being Bullied

Bullying has always been one of the significant problems in schools. With the increase in the use of the internet, cyberbullying cases are increasing.

Kids are using the internet to bully their peers or are getting bullied virtually. Children can make group chat, insult a particular child in the chat, post harmful pictures and videos. And they start to make jokes of whatever they do on the classroom or the internet.

You should communicate with your kids about cyberbullying and its negative impacts. Your kids can be a bully or even can be the victim of the bully.

You should encourage them to share bully problems they face, either with you or with any senior they feel comfortable with. Also, teach your kids to stop bullying if they see any of their peers bullying others.

Sometimes children fear talking to their seniors when their peers are bullying them. It makes them emotionally weak and can affect them mentally. Also, the child starts to isolate themselves, and in the worst case, they even try to harm themselves.

Thus, you should teach your kids never to bully their peers, and if others are bullying them, they should share it with you or with their teachers.

Keep Your Social Media Private

As I already mentioned, children’s obsession with getting likes on social media. In gaining like and popularity, kids post public on their social media.

The name public posts, meaning the post is visible to anyone on the internet. When they make their social media public, anyone can visit their profiles and misuse their posts.

Apart from that, hackers can also visit children’s profiles and easily hack their profile when they make their social media public.

Therefore, you should encourage your children to keep their social media private until they fully understand the internet’s good and bad aspect. Even if they want to make their social media public, they should be responsible for their posts.

Do not Visit Website which has Age Restriction

Adults and violent content on the internet have been among the major challenges for parents. Parents are using different safety rules to protect their kids from being exposed to adult contents.

You can block such websites from your kid’s device; however, this method might not be effective as kids can unblock them easily.

One of the essential things you need to do is teach your kids about the age restriction. You should teach your kids about the negative impact of visiting sites beyond their age limit.

For example, if some games’ age limit is 18+ as it contains violence and language abuse, do not let your kids play such games until they reach the age. When kids play such a game, they start to imitate similar behaviour and use similar language.

Monitor Your Kids Online Activities

There are millions of websites that your kids can visit, and it becomes difficult for you to search and block all those websites. You can’t stay beside your kids each time they use the internet.

Even when you set internet safety rules for your kids, sometimes they try to break the rules. To be sure if your children are following rules that you set for them or not, you should use parental control apps. These apps show your kids online activities, browser histories, social media activities, screen time, and more.

Some of the best parental control apps you can select to monitor your kid’s activities are fenced.ai, Qustodio, Bark.us, Net Nanny, etc. My personal favourite parental control app is fence.ai as it not just monitors children’s online activities also monitors their locations and device activities.

FAQ

How do I protect my child online?

To protect your kids online, you can do the following activities:

• Set some internet rules.
• Limit their screen time.
• Use parental control apps.
• Block inappropriate websites.

What are the best ways to keep yourself safe online?

The best ways to keep yourself safe online is by:

• Securing your internet connection
• Keeping your information private
• Using a firewall
• Using anti-virus software
• Securing passwords

What are safe browsing habits?

First and foremost, for safe browsing habits, never reply to spam emails, always use anti-virus software. Likewise, always be alert when there are some pop-up messages as such messages can contain viruses. Also do not fill up a random form that appears online.

What are the top 3 things that you do to stay safe online?

The top 3 things that you can do to stay safe online are:

1. Use Anti-virus Softwares
2. Secure your network.
3. Use strong and unique passwords.

Conclusion

To conclude, protecting kids from the internet’s bad influence is extremely necessary. Young minds can be affected severely if children are exposed to the internet’s bad side.

You should set some internet rules to guide your kids in the right direction. Not all parents need to use the same rule for their children. Internet rules for each child can be different.

Here are some essential internet rules which can be for all children. If you feel like I have missed some more rules, please feel free to write them in the comment section below.