Empowering parents to help their kids stay safe and avoid unhappiness when using the internet or social media
Our kids often know more about the internet and social media than their parents but they can lack in a true understanding of the dangers and influences that come with their use. This is where its important that a parent steps in check your kids are internet and social media safe - maybe checking that they actually understand and can implement what the school has taught them or using resources available on line. Its also important to checkin with your child (yourself or a trusted party) on the emotional impact of the internet and social media on your child and ensure they know how have time out away from their devices from time to time. Researchers have shown that children’s minds are like sponges and form their view of reality, behaviour and life choices from experiences. Unfortunately, some messages on the internet and from social media provide negative effects on children and youth in society today.
Websites Offering Support:
Vodafone
has a number of useful hints for parents including how to set up parental controls on devices such as the Xbox and Blackberry and how to set up Google SafeSearch.
UK Safer Internet Centre
is a place where you can find e-safety tips, advice, guides and resources to help children and young people stay safe online. As a parent or carer you play a key role in helping your child to stay safe online. You don’t need to be an expert on the internet to help keep your child stay safe online. The advice and resources are there to support you as you support your child to use the internet safely, responsibility and positively.
Thinkuknow
is the education programme from NCA-CEOP, a UK organisation which protects children both online and offline. Explore the websites for advice about staying safe when you’re on a phone, tablet or computer.
The Rethink beauty campaign
When we look at the powers of the media and the influences on the human mind, researchers have confirmed that children are the most vulnerable to messages sent by the media. At their young stage of life, children’s minds are like sponges and develop their perception of reality from past experiences. Using the cognitive information-processing model, children will program “scripts” to decide their behaviour and life choices.
Get Safe Online
This website offers some helpful general and age related advice.
The minimum age for Facebook is 13, however once your daughter has an account these links will be useful:
Childnet
has a section specifically for parents and carers! In this section you will find all the information you need to keep your child safe online.
For detailed information regarding specific topics such as social networking, online grooming, gaming, downloading etc see their Hot topics.
BestVPN
offers a guide for kids and teens on how to stay safe online, which has received praise from InternetSafety101 and the National Crime Agency.
Books on this subject:
The Teenage Guide to Life Online
From the award-winning author of Blame My Brain, The Teenage Guide to Stress and The Teenage Guide to Friends comes The Teenage Guide to Life Online, a balanced look at what happens to us all – young and old – when we spend time on the internet. Nicola Morgan explores the pros and cons of life in the Digital Age, from the information explosion to the growth of social media. Opening with a brief history of the web she then explores hot topics like fake news and online privacy, and draws on fascinating, cutting-edge research into how the internet and screen-use affect our ability to concentrate, our mood and sleep patterns. This is a book for families to share: a way for teenagers, their parents and carers to inform themselves about the many advantages and risks of life online.
Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time
Increasing numbers of parents grapple with children who are acting out without obvious reason. Many of these children are diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar, or autism spectrum disorders. They are then medicated with often poor and side-effect-riddled results. Author Dunckley specializes in working with children and families who have failed to respond to previous treatment and has pioneered a new programme. In her work with more than 500 children, teens, and young adults diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, 80 percent showed marked improvement on the four-week programme presented here. Interactive screens, including video games, laptops, cell phones, and tablets over stimulate a child s nervous system. While no one in today s connected world can completely shun electronic stimuli, Dunckley shows how the most vulnerable amongst us can and should be spared their damaging effects.
Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety: A Complete Guide to Your Child’s Stressed, Depressed, Expanded, Amazing Adolescence
Learn about the “New Teen” and how to adjust your parenting approach. Kids are growing up with nearly unlimited access to social media and the internet, and unprecedented academic, social, and familial stressors. Starting as early as eight years old, children are exposed to information, thought, and emotion that they are developmentally unprepared to process. As a result, saving the typical “teen parenting” strategies for thirteen-year-olds is now years too late.
A shift has taken place in how and when children develop. Because of the exposure they face, kids are emotionally overwhelmed at a young age, often continuing to search for a sense of self well into their twenties. Paradoxically, Dr. Duffy recognizes the good that comes with these challenges, such as the sense of justice instilled in teenagers starting at a young age.
Dr. John Duffy’s parenting book is a new and necessary guide that addresses this hidden phenomenon of the changing teenage brain.
Nurturing Young Minds: Mental Wellbeing in the Digital Age (Generation Next)
Being a teenager has never been easy, but the digital age has brought with it unique challenges for young people and the adults in their lives. This book contains important advice about managing online behaviour, computer game addiction and cyberbullying, as well as essential information on learning disorders, social skills and emotional health.
Glow Kids
We’ve all seen them: kids hypnotically staring at glowing screens in restaurants, in playgrounds and in friends’ houses and the numbers are growing. Like a virtual scourge, the illuminated glowing faces – the Glow Kids – are multiplying. But at what cost? Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula-hoop? Some say that glowing screens might even be good for kids – a form of interactive educational tool. Don’t believe it. In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology – more specifically, age inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure centre as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis. Most shocking of all, recent brain imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young person’s developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can. Kardaras will dive into the sociological, psychological, cultural, and economic factors involved in the global tech epidemic with one major goal: to explore the effect all of our wonderful shiny new technology is having on kids.
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