Keeping kids safe online isn’t the same as keeping them safe while they’re riding their bike, or playing with friends outside, but it’s just as important. It’s easy to think that being in the privacy of your home provides you and your family with a safety net when it comes to being online, which isn’t true. Sure there are things we can do in our home to help make the internet a safer place for our kids, but stay on our toes and focus on keeping kids safe online.
Reasons Keeping Kids Safe Online Is Important + Tips for Parents
I like that my children have access to the internet. It is a useful tool, using it as a resource for schoolwork, and learning how to find their way around the internet, but at the same time there are things that I want to protect my children from online. There are so many things to worry about while kids are online and here are a few that come to mind which is why I’m excited to have partnered with AVG Technology to share a few reasons to keep kids safe online and a few new tips I learned to help parents keep their children safe online.
- Keeping kids safe online from predators – I want to keep my kids safe from all the sicko’s out there preying on young children. It’s important as parents that we do everything we can to stop predators away from our children. I know where my kids are going online, what they are doing, and for my oldest who she is talking to. It’s not my children I don’t trust, it’s those online I don’t know. That’s a lot of people and SCARY!
- Keeping kids safe online from pornography – Kids grow up too fast as it is, and I want to keep mine innocent and young as long as possible. Besides who wants their kids online, looking at pornography? Keeping pornography away from my kids while they’re online is crucial to me. They don’t need to see it; nothing good comes from it, and as an adult I don’t want to see it.
- Keeping my children’s personal life – I have taught my children that personal information is PERSONAL! You don’t need to share what you had for breakfast, and how someone made you feel online. Consider everyone on your friend’s list and their friends, and finally the online world. Saying too much online can have an impact on children in their personal life, and all it takes is that one wrong comment on Facebook.
- Teaching my children NOT to check places – Even if you know everyone on your friends list they don’t need to know where you are and what you are doing every last moment. I think keeping kids safe online starts with teaching them things they can and cannot do and explaining the reason to them.
- Keeping my kids privacy safe online – In the end, everything boils down to privacy. If my kids could be online and not have to worry about other people everything would be great, but that’s never going to happen. When it comes to privacy, I worry about more than what my child is saying on Facebook, but what places like Facebook are doing with my kids’ information or mine for that matter. We all want privacy in our homes. Why wouldn’t we want it online? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my information or my children information sold, used, shared, or anything I don’t know about! Besides the fact that anything we say online is there for everyone and their best friend’s dog to read. Unless we are using products like AVG PrivacyFix, we are often unaware of what is being done with our private data.
- Protecting them from cyberbullying – It’s out there more than many of us would like to admit, but our kids have grown up online, with social media, and are a lot more comfortable using it than many of us.
I can think of a few times my 16-year-old daughter has told me about things happening online that remind me why online privacy and keeping kids safe online is so important. In a way I’m blessed because I don’t worry about my children picking on other kids because they understand how words can hurt people, because of the way their brother is. They all feel the need to stick up for him, watch to see how people look at him, and they also hurt for him if something happens. My oldest daughter is a peach. Anytime she notices someone being picked on, offline or online, she immediately sticks up for them and tries to become their friend. She does a lot for other people, thinks about their feelings, and is quick to put a stop to something she doesn’t feel is right. It’s definitely a quality a lot of people don’t have, but it’s also put her in positions where she is picked on and it did have an impact on the way she felt about herself when she was younger. She’s 16 now, and pretty much understands what the bully thing is about, and why people do it. She’s also learned to choose her friends wisely.
Magda and Mo FREE eBook
Cyberbullying and keeping kids safe online is important to parents, which is why I’m excited of the partnership between AVG Technologies and Childnet International. The two have partnered to help all us parents with the tricky internet safety topics like safe searching and cyberbullying, because let’s face it the more we know, ideas we have, and products we have available to help keep our children safe online, the better off we are. They’re sharing a FREE eBook called Magda and Mo.
Magda and Mo is a fun, FREE interactive eBook that was created by the wonderful people at AVG Technologies and Internet safety charity, Childnet. Magda and Mo are two super curious buddies who love to play online, but they need your help to stay safe by making the right choices. You can follow their interactive adventures, and do your best to help them carry out the right choices during the story. Should they do things themselves, or ask a grown-up for help?
The eBook is to help parents and kids learn how to stay safe online together. Children will enjoy the story, parents check out the Notes for Grown-ups when the story comes to an end. You’ll find great tips on how you can talk to your children on the internet in a positive way. It’s lots of fun, my kids loved it, and the tips have been useful. Head on over and meet Magda and Mo, I think you’ll like them, especially because they understand why keeping kids safe online is so important.
How much are you sharing online?
Did you know that Google, Facebook and plenty of other websites actually collect data about you while you are online? Yes, and there hasn’t been an easy way to control who collects what data until recently, and AVG PrivacyFix can help do just that. AVG PrivacyFix checks your privacy exposure while you’re visiting places like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. All it takes from you is a click of the mouse to fix it, and see which websites reserve the right actually to sell your personal information. Thanks to AVG PrivacyFix you can request for these places to delete your data, get alerts when your privacy is at risk, and even know when policy’s change.
AVG PrivacyFix is available to help parents control and even lock-in our privacy on not only our PC, but tablets, laptops, and our mobile devices too. AVG PrivacyFix also has an easy to access dashboard where we can monitor and adjust our privacy settings easily. It’s a great option for anyone who is looking to protect their loved one’s privacy while they’re online, stay up to date, and even manage your crowd by only showing those you want to see your posts on Facebook, be a discreet tweeter, and choose what’s saved, blocked and viewed on Google.
AVG has a product called AVG PrivacyFix that is available to help parents control and lock-in their privacy on mobile devices, laptops, and your PC. AVG PrivacyFix has an easy to use dashboard, where parent’s can monitor and adjust privacy setting. I just downloaded AVG PrivacyFix, and it’s awesome! I’m thankful I had the opportunity to learn about and that I can download AVG PrivacyFix for FREE.
What things are you currently doing to keep your kids safe online?
