It is expected that we generally know where our kids are, who they are with or what they are doing at any given time of the day. Yet in the digital world, where even our youngest children are increasingly spending a lot of their time, we as parents are reduced to spectators.

Many of us are left reeling from a case of ‘digital whiplash’ – our children may well understand technology better than we do. Kids today have only known a world that is cyber-filled and technology has influenced every aspect of their lives. It informs their friendships, their education, their leisure time and even their growing understanding of the world. Meanwhile, we are left trying to figure out which rules we should set and how we should enforce them.

There is a designated age when we can drink, smoke and have sex. The internet has just as much impact on our lives as any of these things and yet there are no official guidelines on the right time to venture into cyberspace. Online life tends to start at an early age and accelerate very quickly. There are the Disney interactive games, Nintendo DS, and before they know it children venture onto YouTube, where they find a treasure trove of information and stimulation, both positive and negative. The ‘right’ age for a child to log on to the internet varies for each individual. Ideally, each website would be rated for age-appropriate content, but because of the instant, snowballing nature of the internet this is unfortunately very unlikely to happen.

My parents used to overhear my childhood phone conversations on the landline. Our only phone was kept in the hall of our house. Now, so much communication goes on silently out of our range and knowledge, over text, social networking and via mobile phones. Preventing your child from using the internet or a mobile phone won’t keep them safe, so the only way forward is to allow them to undertake these activities under guidelines and supervision. As ever, communication is the key to getting this one right. Introducing conversations around technology should ideally happen as soon as children are able to speak. It’s important that they know they can talk to you about it. I am going to tackle the two main culprits in this blog, the internet and ‘online friends’.

Internet

Children of Junior level (eight and above) need access to the internet in order to do their homework assignments. Most web providers allow you to set parental controls, allowing you to block certain websites that may have adult or inappropriate content. As your child grows older, you can loosen the controls gradually. It’s easier to have conversations about online safety little and often, rather than trying to cover everything all at once, which confuses everyone involved. As your children get older and technology advances and changes, make sure that you continue talking about what they are doing online and that you, to the best of your ability, keep abreast of these changes.

To understand exactly what your children are doing online, try asking them about their favourite website, why they enjoy it and what their favourite features are. Try to keep the chat light and casual, rather than accusing. This will keep you one step ahead of them. Let your children show you how to use websites and games. Children and young people often enjoy showing their parents what they have learned and achieved and this is a way for you to use their potentially superior technical knowledge to your advantage. It also means you are showing them support, which they will appreciate.

There are conversational ways to approach any subjects you might be worried about, in terms of cyber safety. Ask your teenagers what tips they would give to other teens who wanted to protect themselves online. When they volunteer what they know, ask them how they learned that. Ask your child to help you set up a profile on social media – this way you can check to see whether they know about privacy settings (which determine how much of the information they display can be seen by the general public) and whether they are likely to have applied these to their own accounts.

You could play a game with your child online. This will give you an insight into the game, whether it is appropriate for their age and how they are interacting with others on the internet.

n terms of setting time limits, owing to the clandestine nature of the internet (sometimes you don’t know if they are on a website or reading a book on their Kindle, for example, since from the outside the two activities appear exactly the same), some parents find it helpful simply to turn the router off at a certain time of day, to provide a definite ‘cut off point’.

Online ‘Friends’

Today’s young people don’t think of those they have met online through social networking and gaming as strangers, they class them as friends. It’s important to try and ascertain who they are talking to and how choosy they are being about who they befriend online.

Ask them who has the most online friends out of everyone they know. You could try asking them how it is possible to have so many friends. It’s crucial to explain that people are capable of lying about their personal details – age, gender and photograph – online and encourage your child to have a healthy degree of suspicion towards anyone they talk to on the web.

Try accessing your child’s social networking accounts from outside, whilst not logged into the website, to ascertain just how much sensitive information they are giving away.

Probably the biggest danger to young people on the web is that they will be sucked into an online ‘community’ who engage in dangerous practices, such as self-harm or anorexia as a ‘lifestyle’. The web links us to other like-minded people, so that behaviours which aren’t normal become normalised. Again, monitoring and communication will help you to assess whether or not your child might have become sucked into a potentially dangerous online forum, as will the language that they use. If they suddenly begin using slang terminology relating to eating disorders or self-harm, then it is likely that they learned these by talking to others online.

Conclusion

The internet is one of those things which, as a parent, can make you feel as though you are losing control over your children. With communication, guidelines and boundaries, that control can be regained in a way that does not feel intrusive to your child.

**the information in this blog is taken from my book Fundamentals – available here.