Middle school used to be the time when kids solidified their multiplication and division facts, worked on their report writing skills, and spent time after school playing in the backyard with neighborhood friends. Now, however, middle school is also the time when many children are exploring a new world – the open arena of online information, games, merchants, and social media. Beyond the basic foundations of mathematics, writing, and manners while visiting the neighbors, parents need to now make sure that they are teaching their children about online safety.

Stranger Danger

If the term stranger danger used to bring connotations of a wayward man approaching the schoolyard and offering candy, the new stranger danger for middle school children is the one lurking online – in their chat rooms, on Facebook, and in emails. Parents must teach their young children about a new type of stranger, and an increasingly difficult challenge of knowing the differences between real people and the person that is portrayed online.

• Show your kids how easy it is to create a “fake” identity online. Use a free social media site or email application, and walk through the steps of adding information (gender, age, geographic location, etc.). This isn’t to teach them how to be artificial online, but to show them how easily this information is selected without any proof required, and how they just can’t trust what is written on the screen.
• Don’t allow your young children to communicate with anyone they or you haven’t met in person. Middle school children don’t need to be forming lifelong bonds with internet strangers – know who they know and how they met them (this goes for real life and internet life).
• Teach your children to communicate with you about the encounters they have online – and start by asking them the questions. Who is in your email address book? Do the games you play have chat capabilities? These are the types of questions you need to ask, and keep asking, as the answers to these are often changing.

The Rule Bending Game

Children quickly learn how easily they can bend the rules online, and Facebook is one of the best examples of this. The rules state that users must be 13 years of age or older, but most everyone knows a child younger than that age who has a Facebook account. There is no safety net to stop kids from selecting a false birth date and year that allows them to create an account, and there aren’t enough safety nets to keep kids safe on these social media sites.

• Make sure you know the rules for establishing things like Facebook accounts, and make sure you enforce these with your kids.
• Check to see what information your kids are providing, and how they are presenting themselves online. It is a catch 22 scenario. You want to teach your child to be honest with information, but that puts your child at risk. If you allow your child to falsify information, you are allowing them to do the same thing you are warning them against. The best choice is to not allow middle school children to use these sites that require personal and identifying information.

Safety First

If middle school-aged children were capable of always making safe and responsible decisions, they wouldn’t need parents. But they do – and here are a few things parents can do to help guide their children when it comes to online safety.

• It is still a good idea to keep the computer in a central location, and pay attention to what is on the screen. In addition to this, if your child has a laptop you need to create “doors open” rule when your child is on the laptop.  Also, don’t forget you need to pay attention to what they are doing on their smartphone, as kids with smartphones have the power of a computer right in their hands.
• Don’t overreact when you think that your child is viewing or using inappropriate or questionable content and websites. Instead, calmly go through the site and talk about why these things are inappropriate and how they might even become a danger.
• Use a back-up system such as child monitoring software. Some programs alert children to when content on a site is not suitable for children and why the page won’t open.  Programs are also available to help parents protect their kids when they are on their smartphones.
• Know which sites your child is using in school, and work with your child’s school administration to make sure that online safety topics are also covered in school.

AUTHOR OVERVIEW

Lisa Shaw Senior Director, Child Online Safety and Protection at SpectorSoft

What do five kids ranging in age from kindergarten to high school, a Harvard MBA and years of protecting kids online get you? It gets you Lisa Shaw, COO of her very busy household, and a Senior Director at SpectorSoft, the number one leader in monitoring and protecting your kids online. She's an expert on the technology and trends that you need to arm yourself with to be the best parent you can be in today’s digital world.

Tags: middle School, online safety, Safety