Children and the Internet
Recommendations:
- Talk to children and show real interest in what they are writing about themselves and who their chat-friends and e-mail friends are.
- Be honest and frank when speaking to children. Point out the potential threats in virtual environment. Prohibitions and blocking of some Internet pages in the home computer are no substitute for a conversation between you and your children. Besides, they can also chat and use e-mail outside home.
- Warn children that they should not disclose their home address, phone number or other personal information that can expose them to danger. Furthermore, ask children what they think about possible consequences and let them make responsible decisions themselves.
- Instruct children not to disclose any information about other family members that adults would not want them to disclose.
- Explain that people in the virtual environment sometimes hide their true identity. Therefore, they should not blindly trust everything written in a chat, an e-mail, or elsewhere on the Internet.
- Do not install the computer in your child's room, but in a place accessible to the whole family. It will help you to keep an eye on chatting and communication via e-mail. Become a user of the same portal as your child. It will help you to get to know the environment of the portal, where your child is spending time.
- Warn children that working or chatting on an openly accessible computer involves the risk that somebody can find out personal information about you or your children.
- If your child reveals that an anonymous or weird conversation friend has insisted on meeting your child, threatened him or her, expressed offensive remarks or sexual proposals, you should inform the administration of the portal, as well as law enforcement institutions.
- Do not delete e-mails or chats in which an anonymous person threatens your child, offends him or her, exercises sexual harassment or insults him or her in another way. These data can help to expose the potential violator.
- Make an agreement: if your child still wants to meet his or her chat friends, it must be approved by you.
- Tell your children about possible threats on the Internet, but do not forbid its use, since such prohibitions will only tempt the child to use the Internet secretly and he or she will not trust you with really significant problems.
- If you are worried about what your child is actually doing, for example, in the portal draugiem.lv, register there and invite your child to accept your friendship - it will give you a chance to observe your child’s activities and see who his or her friends are.
A great way to point a child’s attention towards safety risks on the Internet is a common (in family or in class) agreement on rules for use of the Internet – create these rules together with children. Here are some forms of "10 GOLDEN rules for use of the Internet". We have supplemented the example with a couple of sentences, which you can "borrow" for your own rules.
