Internet Safety for Kids: Importance & Tips

The Internet is not only a great source of information but it also helps in collaborating with others worldwide. All information is available on the click of a button. You do not have to even leave the comforts of your house to access any information. You just need the help of search engines to access just about any information across the world.

Though, at first, the ease of access to any information sounds advantageous but its potential dangers cannot be neglected. Internet safety for kids has become a significant topic in our digital world. It is because a large section of internet users are kids. Safe search engines, hence, have become a necessity.

Children are using the internet for various purposes. They go online to play games, look at videos, connect with family and friends, complete homework etc. Young children are generally accompanied by adults, however, the school going kids are often independently using the internet. Since most of the time they are online unsupervised, they are more prone to internet safety or online safety risks than younger Kids. Hence, it becomes necessary to ensure kids’ internet safety.

Children are not aware of viruses, online privacy, phishing, social networking etiquette, and any other internet safety and/or security issue you can think of. This resulted in the need for child-friendly safe search engines.

For parents in the digital age, one of the most important concerns is internet safety of their kids. According to one report, “in spite of the lack of formal research, though, the FBI’s own statistics show that pornography is found at 80% of the scenes of violent sex crimes, or in the homes of the perpetrators.” Ensuring internet safety for kids is a necessity to avoid these kinds of dangers, and it becomes necessary to keep the kids and adults away from adult, profane, vulgar, inoffensive and inappropriate content.

So, how can you keep your children and teens safe online?

It is important to teach kids how to use the internet safely and responsibly. One of the key things is to start the process of discussing online safety with your kids at an early age, when they start to do anything that involves the internet.

The 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Internet browsing that needs to be shared with kids for safe online use are:

1. Do practice safe browsing by keeping strong passwords. A strong password is one that is unique and complex— a mixture of upper and lowercase letters and numbers, at least 10 characters long.
2. Do tell your parent or other trusted adult about any communication or conversation that was scary or hurtful.
3. Do pay attention to what you are downloading as you can be tricked into downloading malware—programs or apps that carry malware or try to steal information.
4. Do keep your antivirus programs, other software and operating systems updated.
5. Do make sure that your Internet connection is secure. A secure connection should show https:// before the URL. Also, avoid public wifi at places like coffee shops or airports where the connection is not secure.
6. Don’t reveal personal information, such as address, phone number, or school name or location.
7. Don’t meet anyone who has interacted online without parent approval and supervision.
8. Don’t respond to a threatening email, message, post, or text. Inform your parent or a trusted adult as soon as possible.
9. Don’t befriend people you don’t know. People do not always share the truth online.
10. Don’t share your account passwords. Your accounts might be misused and can put you in trouble.

There are some behaviors of kids that parents need to observe. These may be the signs of danger for the child:

• Spending too much time online especially during late hours
• Your child getting nervous when you walk around their computer / smartphone
• Unknown phone calls
• Your child showing the need for more privacy

Some guidelines for parental supervision are:

• Don’t use gadgets as pacifiers. They are tools and can never replace human affection and attention which a child deserves.
• Identify a common area to keep the computer so that you can watch and monitor its use, not in individual bedrooms. Monitor any time spent on smartphones or tablets.
• Find out which sites and apps teens use and their online experiences.
• Have an ongoing conversation with them about technology and potential dangers hidden in its use.
• Tell them not to interact with strangers online at any cost.
• Explain the importance of keeping passwords as a secret and not to share it with anyone.
• You should be trustworthy enough for your child to share with you any issue regarding their online experience.
• Tell them to shut down the computer without clicking on anything if they come across any inappropriate content.
• Usage of child friendly safe search engine i.e. SafeSearchEngine.com should be encouraged. It is perfect to safeguard children from inappropriate adult, sexual and potentially offensive content.

Kids should be using SafeSearchEngine.com, which is a specially designed platform made to help vet web content such as words, images and videos. The parent can be rest assured that their child is safe while using a safe search engine. It has child-friendly content which resolves their query like any other search engine but filters out the inappropriate content which might harm them.

Following are the features/benefits of using SafeSearchEngine.com:

• This is a search engine especially made for kids, students and society. It is very easy to use and make your default search engine.
• There is an automated filter in the search engine to block inappropriate adult, sexual and potentially offensive content.
• If the user searches for any sexual or inappropriate content, SafeSearchEngine.com blocks all those results and doesn’t show any result.
• It is built on safe search functionality, which can be activated on all browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Safari by downloading SafeSearchEngine.com browser extensions.
• It’s perfect to be used in schools, colleges, universities, cyber cafes, workplaces and public places to safeguard kids and community from inappropriate adult content that is spread across the internet.

Please click on ‘Try Search’ to see SafeSearchEngine.com in action, or click on ‘Make Default Search Engine’ to add it to your browser to ensure internet safety for your kids.

Happy Safe Searching!

Don’t forget to share among your friends.