6 CRITICAL QUESTIONS as a parent of a young teenager
Imagine you are a parent of a young teenager and you have to answer these critical questions.
- You find out that your teen is accessing pornography online. How will you address this?
- You discover that your teen has uploaded a naked picture of themselves on social media. What would you do next?
- You realize that they have shared a video on their social media account, which shows a cyberbullied friend. What would you say to them?
- You notice that they are using offensive language on their social media account. How will you address this?
- You realize that they are making hurtful comments to another peer in the same year group on their social media account. Who do you need to speak to, and what would you say to them?
The Net Children Go Mobile study (Mascheroni and Cuman, 2014) found that parents used the following strategies to help keep their children safe online:
Active mediation
involves guiding their child in online safety and talking to them about their online activities.
Restrictive mediation
involves creating rules about what children can or cannot do online, installing filters to block harmful content, and monitoring a child’s online activity by searching their internet history.
Additionally, restrictive mediation involves installing monitoring software or checking a child’s social network profile.
The research found that restrictive mediation could inhibit the development of the skills needed to handle online risk. Thus, limiting internet access can restrict the range of skills children, and young people need to manage internet safety. Research by Przybylski et al. (2014) demonstrates that adolescents learn internet safety skills through experience. Thus, experience helps them to become more effective at managing online risks.
These are challenging issues for a parent. Join the Online Youth Awareness And Safety Programme! It is one place to find all the most recent information you need to help you keep your child safe. E-books are available, and workshops links to other relevant and trustful sites, etc.
But it is also a place for your child to connect with our own influencer, and find, read, and learn how to be safe online.
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