Tips for keeping children safe while using mobile devices

Friday Finds to Nourish Your Day:  

It’s Friday and we are happy to share these resources and materials to help you promote healthy, safe practices for your child while using mobile devices to nourish the children in your lives!

When choosing a mobile device, helpful questions to ask your provider include:¹

• Can I block the internet on this mobile device?
• Can I control what websites or apps are accessible on this mobile device?
• Do you offer any solutions that will help parents monitor the activity on this mobile device?
• Will my child be able to receive and send texts, messages and pictures with this mobile device.  If they can, can I block that activity from receiving and from my child sending?
• Is there any way that I can limit the time my child has on device or if using any text, telephone features of this mobile device?
• Is there some way that a parent can control the contact information of users and block certain contact information from being added to the device?
• Can I completely block any outgoing content from this mobile device?

Here are some general rules to teach your child:

• Be very specific and clear with your child about when and how they can use their mobile device
• Ensure that your child can only communicate with the contacts that you have reviewed and approved.
• Teach your child about cyberbullying and that should always communicate in a respectful, polite manner when texting or calling
• Teach your child to treat strange messages the same way you would treat a stranger, they should not respond and they must tell you right away
• Teach children to never enter personal information online.  
• Teach children about the online world.  Once something is sent out, you no longer have any control over it.  This means that the child can't take it back and it could be disseminated to the whole world.
• Decide if you will allow your child to go onto social networks and if so, parents should have total transparency to the account
• Teach children to not allow others to use their phone.  

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1.  http://www.internetsafety101.org/mobileempoweringparents.htm