5 Tips To Keep Your Kids Safe Online

I love technology – the ability to have limitless knowledge at your fingertips and ways to keep connected with my friends and family – I love sharing pictures online with you and catching up on my favorite TV shows – sometimes it’s seriously hard to remember what life was like before all of this technology.

1.  Because I don’t want them to be dependent on it for information or entertainment (yes, I’m that mom who makes you look it up in a dictionary or play a board game) and
2. I’m careful about what they see – I want to make sure they are always safe, because let’s face it – there’s a lot of not-so-good things online too.

1. Set a time limit and stick to it.
2. Internet usage is only allowed in the kitchen or living room – in other words in a place that’s always supervised.
3. They are only allowed to look at approved websites, and need to ask before looking at other things.
4. No social media until they are at the ‘approved’ age. This one is a bit harder when you have older kids – Anika is at the age where a lot of her friends are joining Facebook and Twitter, but I’ve told her no social media until she’s 13 – after all, that’s  Facebook’s policy and I don’t want to teach her that it’s okay to lie about your age.
5. Ask questions and talk! Technology should be a fun learning experience for kids – and it can open the door for lots of conversations and inspiration for everyone!

 Most of you know by now that I’m pretty involved in our school, and have been the President of our Parent Teacher Organization for a while now (this is my second year) so I was really excited when I heard that the National PTA has partnered with LifeLock to share awesome ways families can create an open, evolving conversation about positive, safe decisions when using digital tools through their #ShareAwesome campaign.