Teach Your Child About Digital Safety With Be Internet Awesome
As parents, we are constantly encouraged to teach our children about Internet safety. We must do this – it is clear. But moms and dads need more guidance, because let’s face it: we ourselves struggle to navigate the murky waters of the net as well. This is why I love the tools Google has released as part of their Be Internet Awesome kids program. The free online game Interland is especially useful – I played it and learned a thing or two about digital security and citizenship myself.
Interland is an immersive world of four games, each dedicated to a different aspect of online security. There’s Reality River, which teaches kids how to recognize fake news, recognize signs of fraud, and understand phishing. In Mindful Mountain, players learn about the consequences of “over-dissemination” (“Information travels at the speed of light,” the game warns). Kind Kingdom teaches what to do with cyber bullies, and Treasure Tower helps kids learn how to create strong passwords. At the end of each of the four lands, the players are asked what they have learned.
This week, Be Internet Awesome expanded its offerings to include media literacy events as well as bilingual parenting workshops in partnership with the YMCA. There’s also a family guide to help you practice good digital habits in your daily life, tips to help keep your kids safe, and a promise you can print out to get everyone in your home signed.
You can use these tools as a starting point for talking to your kids about digital safety, but be aware that this discussion should be open and ongoing. An analogy can be made to giving your child access to the Internet, which is like handing over the keys to the family’s car – you wouldn’t do that without explaining how to behave on the road and what dangers to look out for. And at least for a while you have to sit right next to them.