Creating an Online Awareness

Welcome to Family Zone. I’m Pete Brown and I am a local High School Teacher in Western Australia. Being an ICT Teacher,  I’m deeply involved in cyber safety. I work with the faculty, our kids and their parents on issues, incidents and solutions. And I have seen the worst of kid’s exposures to the cyber world. What kids can access, do, do to each other, get caught out by and how the digital world can re-wire their minds is very confronting. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t advocate a shut-down-access approach, but I think all parents need to apply some basic tools to limit appropriate access and to set and monitor boundaries.

By now you should be well underway feeling happy that your family is in good hands with Family Zone, so I thought I would send you some practical tips on how you can continue this journey for safer surfing for everyone.

1. Teaching your child about respect: respecting themselves and respecting others. If you stop them from being on Twitter or Facebook they’ll just move to WhatsApp or Instagram or SnapChat or Google+ or … It is important that we give the skills to make good decisions first and foremost.

2. Don’t use social media to humiliate. It may be a temporary fix the potential long-term ramifications definitely outweigh the short term.

3. Teaching your child that whatever they put online is permanent (this includes texting!) Private is not always private. The photo they posted online is now not owned by them. It’s owned by the social networking site and they can do what they want with it.

4. Lead by example. It is important that we practice what we preach if you want them to navigate their digital life safely.

5. Communicating verbally is completely different than communicating online. If you happen to say something verbally that you later regret you can fix this over time. If you happen to post something online that you later regret that content may never disappear and you may never be able to fix it.

6. Telling your child to never take seductive photos and text them. It’s incredibly risky and foolish. For example: ‘Sexting’ should be a subject discussed before any smartphone is purchased. All this applies to pictures of under-age drinking, doing drugs, or any other illegal activity!