Digital Parenting: Raising And Protecting Your Children In A Media World

Our children are adopting technologies at younger and quicker rates than ever before as they grow up in a digital world, touching, seeing, and engaging with them, and ultimately interpreting the world through the lens of these tools. As a parent, it's important to take a moment to evaluate what this implies for kids of all ages, taking into account everything from socializing to physical safety to, of course, cyber ethics and cyber safety.

There was a time when teaching children the "golden rule" and the advice to "don't talk to strangers" was sufficient to keep them safe. As a child grew, these lessons could be applied to increasingly complex situations, and since children learned them early, they were better prepared to make responsible judgments as they became older.

However, times have evolved. Technology\shappened. It has been compared to opening the front door of the family home and letting strangers-possibly dangerous ones-in to play when children nowadays have unrestricted access to internet-enabled screens.

Being a parent has never been simple. To safeguard our children's health and wellbeing, we must handle the additional problems that come with parenting in the digital age. The errors our children can make-posting anything that causes them to be booted off a team, denied admission to the college of their choice, or connecting with a child predator who gradually grooms them-can haunt them for the rest of their lives or, worse yet, place them in a life-life.

The truth is that there isn't a single, comprehensive guideline for safeguarding children's internet safety. Because technology advances so quickly, it is ineffective to simply give advice on which platforms or apps to use or avoid, or give explicit instructions on how to set up parental controls. Our kids need grownups to help them behave in a safe and proper manner. They require their parents and other primary caregivers to treat the internet like the playground that it is and to set up security measures as soon as possible. As the child gets older, parents must reiterate these lessons.