shelter

Madelyn, I love you, but we both know how this ends.

dont leave small children fully unattended. take them to a park and let them play with their friends without hovering over their shoulders have some kind of parental controls and access to kid friendly sites. ask them about their online lives when theyre done playing. did they have fun? what are their friends names? what did they play? if your kid mentions something strange, maybe do some digging to make sure nothing sketchy is going on. plus, you get to talk to your kid and find out what theyre interested in

as kids get older (around 13, though this isn't strictly a one-size-fits-all situation), give them more freedoms

when kids start getting towards maturity, loosen up on the parental restrictions. maybe let them keep their younger siblings out of trouble and entertained by showing them the games they used to play, but also let them have a few more freedoms to test the waters. some parental locks are still a good idea, but if they want to get social media, this is around when that will probably be happening. remember that outright banning of social media presences rarely helps. your children won't be learning safe internet habits and most kids will simply find ways to slip through not only the ban, but all restrictions. the internet doesn't end at your doorstep and it is very very easy to get access to public wifi.

now is also when you give your kids a more detailed version of the internet safety talk. 'dont talk to strangers' is a bit reductive, but not fully wrong. dont give out your real name, location, age, or identifying information is a minimum. remind them that even if theyre passing that information to someone they trust, the nature of the internet is that correspondence is not guaranteed privacy.

personally, I recommend having them pick a 'pretend birthday' to use for logging into websites that require those kinds of checks for age filters and depending on your personal level of comfort, something to celebrate with internet-only friends. something close enough to their real birthday to accurately be filtered by age restricted sites, but not their actual birthdate so that every club penguin, hulu, google, whatever site doesn't have that identifying information. pick one with them for fun!

old enough to drive old enough to play without a chaperone

this isn't a one to one metaphor, obviously. 16 year olds are more easily vulnerable to more internet dangers than they are irl ones. predatory money scams don't check for age, after all, and most kids have at least some access to money nowadays, even if its just a card for subscription fees.

however, this is the point around which up close and direct supervision of your child's internet habits does more harm to your relationships than good to their safety. keep an open line of communication with your children (show interest and learn about their hobbies and interests. if you are able to understand the spaces they enjoy hanging out, you'll be better positioned to spot anyone who might try and exploit them. also, you'll have something to talk to your kid about!)

there are new aspects to online life that you need to be aware of and teach your children

make sure your kids know about malware and data collection and are careful about what websites they go on and what links they click. teach your children that they don't owe anyone engagement and it's okay to disengage from toxic or shitty conversations. if your kid is part of the large number of people who want a social media platform of some kind, make sure that they have messaging filters and understand the difference between someone's genuine concern and someone's bad faith harassment.

remind your kids that the distribution of child prnography is illegal, even if they are the child in question. it is possible for them to face legal consequences for sharing nudes of themselves online, even if it's just over text to a partner.

the wonder years @ webster hall (march 2022)