subject: Teaching Internet Safety To Teens [print this page] With students heading back to school for the fall, teaching Internet safety to teens is becoming once again a priority for parents, teachers and also those in the Internet community who are dedicated to those young ones.Unfortunately, teens are not the ones who are searching for the tips online about safety.It is up to the parents and the teachers to relay messages to kids.Here are some of those tips that kids need to know about Internet safety for teens:
One of the best things you can do is to get to know your childs online friends, just like you would get to know their friends from school.Find out what they do online and where they go, and especially who they are talking to.Check their privacy settings and who they accept as their friends on social websites.You have to make sure that the only ones who are on their friends lists are those from school that they personally know.
It is always a good idea to get your kids to share their profiles and blogs with you, but you need to be aware that they can actually have more than one account on these services.You can also perform a search using search engines and search tools on the social networking websites to find these other profiles.Search for their full names, their nick names, phone numbers, and any other identifying information they might use.If you are afraid that you are invading their privacy by doing this, remember two things.First of all, they are putting personal information up in public places that anyone can have access to.Second, would you rather look for their profiles or have no idea what they are up to or who they are talking to and down the road have something bad happen to them?
There are many instances in which children have trouble thinking long term.For Internet safety for teens to work, you have to help them understand that everything they do online is going to leave a digital footprint.What does this mean?It means that if they do not want to see it tomorrow, they better not post it today.They need to think twice before they post anything that could embarrass them or someone else or cause trouble with someone down the road.We have all heard of tragic deaths of kids who, because of a breakdown in Internet safety for teens, have ended up dead or severely injured because of something they posted about someone else on these social networking web sites.
