EvaDec 20, 2022

When I tell parents that secretly spying on their kids' internet activities is not a great look, they ask me "Well, what SHOULD I do?"

There is no all-purpose parenting answer, but this report from Malwarebytes outlines many of the key considerations: https://www.malwarebytes.com/resources/attachments/parenting-and-growing-up-online-10-2022.pdf

Show threadScornflakegrrrlDec 20, 2022
@evacide monitoring and banning does not keep your kids safe, and most likely will put them at more risk because they will not feel able to talk to you about stuff they encountered online. It's better to talk to them about what they could encounter and how to deal with it and how to protect themselves. Plus you don't own your kidd. They have a right to privacy
Show threadAngel

@Scornflakegrrrl @evacide

I agree wholeheartedly. We have to empower our youth to make informed choices and feel safe enough to come to us with concerns. I've been working on building some digital literacy skills with my 8 year old and sitting alongside him showing him how to tell what are sponsored ads, flaws in algorithms, how to discern if a resource is credible, and we have talked about general online safety as well.

As a teen who started exploring the internet in the internet in the mid-90s, I definitely got into some unsavory stuff and learned some lessons, but I wish I would have learned some of the things I am teaching my son now. With all the cuts to school media centers and specialists, a lot of kids don't get much, if any, instruction on critical digital literacy skills.

Dec 20, 2022 at 11:23pmWeb