Teaching Your Teen Online Safety
Parents’ guide to teaching your teen online safety
Keeping your teen safe online is near the top of the worry list for parents today. Children do everything online, from learning to socialising, gaming to shopping. For teens, learning how to recognise the risks and protect themselves is a life skill that they will need for years to come.
The first step to keeping teens safe online is to know what your child is actually doing online. Rather than banning it, you need to engage with it. Even if they’ve told you what apps they’re on, it can easily go over your head if you’re not in the know. Here’s a run-down of the main online platforms that teens are using at the moment.
The most popular apps with teens right now
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Multiplayer video games
Instagram is the most popular app with teens today. You might use it yourself, but if you don’t it’s an app where you can simply post a picture (or several) with a caption, and this then gets viewed by other users who follow your account.
You have the choice to have a private or a public account. If you have a public account, and if your photo caption contains words with a hashtag in front of them (i.e. #picoftheday), then it will get shared with users who follow that hashtag.
Pros: Great for discovering inspiring ideas and content.
Cons: Can promote unrealistic ideas of what’s real or normal.
TikTok
A musical app where you upload a 15-second video – normally miming the words to a song – and then merge it with music to create a short music video.
Pros: A fun way for kids to be creative with music and videos.
Cons: There’s little in the way of screening for different age-groups, so they might see provocative or inappropriate videos.
YouTube
You’ll almost certainly know about YouTube, the video sharing site. With teens, make-up tutorial videos, video game demonstrations, singing and music videos all have huge popularity. Some users who have thousands of followers, including children and teens, get paid (sometimes enough to live on) by companies for reviewing their products in their videos.
Pros: A great source of free educational and entertaining videos.
Cons: Like with Instagram, influencers can encourage an unrealistic view of what’s normal.
Snapchat
Snapchat lets you take a photo or short video – with the option of many fun face-recognition filters – to your friends. The video/photo then deletes itself straight after being viewed.
Pros: It makes video and picture sharing easy and means content doesn’t fill up memory on everyone’s phones.
Cons: If any content is bullying or inappropriate, it can delete itself before the recipient gets the chance to report it.
X (Previously Twitter)
Another one that you’ll probably be familiar with. The message posting site that has changed the world since it was founded in 2006. It Is really popular with teens, and they often use it to share memes, jokes and opinions of whatever’s going on in their day. Like Instagram, if you have a public account you can share your posts more widely by using hashtags, and you can choose to keep your posts private too.
Pros: Gives everyone a chance to share their news and opinions, and find out what others are saying too.
Cons: Kids are exposed to a full range of content (good and bad) and since it is public, their posts may receive comments from strangers.
You’ll probably have this on your phone too. Used by billions across the world, it’s one of the most popular ways to instant message, both one-to-one and in groups. You need someone’s phone number or email address to be able to message them, and messages are “end-to-end encrypted”, which means they’re (basically) unhackable.
Pros: Makes messaging quick and easy, and works on both Apple and Android devices.
Cons: Can be addictive, especially if they’re in any active group chats.
Multiplayer video games – XBox, Playstation, Minecraft, Fortnite etc.
Popular with lots of teens and adults, video-games that are linked to the internet let you play with people from anywhere else in the world.
Pros: State-of-the-art gaming which is really fun and can be creative and educational. Instant message and audio chat options make them very social.
Cons: It’s possible to play with and chat to people who they don’t know.
