Did you know most parents are surprised to find that their children have social media accounts on websites that you may have never even heard of?

Talk to your child and make sure you understand all the websites they use and how to use them. Parents need to know what their children saw and heard on the internet, who they met, and what they said to themselves.

It is important to give children instructions on how to use the internet safely. More important than blocking objectionable content is educating your children about safe and responsible online behavior and monitoring their use of the internet.

Here’s everything you need to know about internet safety for teens.

Safety Tips When Browsing

Keep a few internet safety tips near their computer at all times when your child is browsing. Find out what online protection, if any, your child is offered at school, after school, at a friend’s house, or anywhere else where children can use a computer without your supervision.

Be open with your child and encourage them to come to you if they encounter a problem on the internet. It is important to maintain an open line of communication with your child so that he or she reaches out to you when there are problems online and knows how communicating with them can help protect them.

On Cyberbullying and Sexting

Cyberbullying, sexting, and the digital world for children can feel beguiling and difficult.

Talk to your kids about online safety and how they spend time online. You can help them stay safe and also enjoy all the gifts the wide world wide web has to offer (yes, we said the world wide web because we are so old ).

It’s hard to discuss these topics but you must do. 71% of parents over the age of 50 say that parenting is harder today. There is a clear correlation between parents who find parenting difficult and those who understand the internet.

Talk to your child about your internet security concerns in a positive way and allow him to take security measures that you both can live with. Remind your child that if they post information online, they will not be able to return it.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, especially if your child posts it on their social media profile.

Discussing Cell Phone Security

It is also important to discuss cell phone security so that children can easily access social networking sites and not see their parents. Therefore, be sure to check out such applications in detail. We hope this post will send a wake-up call to some parents to start monitoring their children’s online lives more closely.

If your child is younger and online, you can sit with him and surf the internet together, watch funny videos to share experiences, and start instilling these advanced techniques at an early age.

It can certainly be a challenge to keep your child online at all times, especially if they are older and have access to a computer or mobile device. However, there is a way to keep track of how your kids are using social media without ever going online.

Why Setting It And Forgetting It Is a Bad Idea

That’s why, when it comes to controls, you can’t just “set it and forget it”: you have to keep track of how they spend their time online. Parental control restrictions also demonstrate why this is important.

Teach them safe and responsible online behavior from the beginning. Some experts and parents insist that parents should monitor their children’s social media for serious warning signs.

However, according to statistics from every cloud safety guide, 68% of children said their parents don’t monitor them online. Keeping track of teens’ online activity can be difficult as the privacy the internet offers them.

Even if you don’t use social media, you should be friends with your child so that you can check and see their messages regularly.

You could try Connectnw.net/windstream which is a great service plan that includes some internet restriction tools.

Some browsers allow you to set parental controls and password protection of these settings, which can make it difficult for children to bypass them intentionally or unintentionally.

Online Protection Controls

Online protection tools help you control your child’s access to inappropriate content and protect it from internet predators. Online tools help you control your children’s access to adult content and protect them from predators.

Such controls limit screen time and internet access, filter content inappropriate age, and even track your child’s online activity. By placing the family computer in a shared area, such as the kitchen or living room, you can better monitor your children’s online activity.

But make sure you limit their online time so that it doesn’t affect the kids’ daily routines. You know your teen’s “online friends” just as you know all of their friends.

The Internet Is Not What It Seems

One of the reasons the internet is scary is because it’s very easy for people to lie.

Using apps and websites that children interact with, predators can pretend to be children or teenagers looking to make new friends. Many teens complain that someone wrote a lie about them online, so you can imagine how scary it is for a child to be blackmailed and afraid to use social networks or share something with others.

But not all screen time is created equal, especially when it comes to children’s online safety. Federal law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (coppa), protects children under the age of 13 when they are online. Not only will this save them a lot of time and prevent them from going to the “bad”, but it will also alert you to what they are looking for on the internet.

Internet Safety For Teens: Get Smart

If you grew up without the internet it’s very easy for you to dismiss it as a tool the younger generations use.

But if you really care about internet safety for teens you need to get smart and make sure you understand the internet so you can get to know what your teenagers are doing on it.

For more be sure to check out the rest of the site.