Technology: Resources for Keeping Kids Safe

Online Resources

Technology for Kids. This site has several articles dealing with different aspects of kids and technology (such as “How to Teach Your Kids to Be Digitally Literate” and “What Every Parent Needs to Know About Snapchat.”

UK Safer Internet Centre. Things parents and caretakers can to do keep kids safe on the Internet.

Kid’s Online Safety. These are guidelines from the US government with a variety of topics other than just general online safety.

MentalUp: Positive and Negative Effects of Technology on Children. This link shares some of the positives and negatives of children using the internet, and it includes ways to add safety.

Parental Control Kroha Application – Review of App. This parental control app is created to protect kids and provides supervision to keep kids safe online. The app is a powerful child control app for screen time, tracking location, tracking application usage time, limit app usage, limit phone usage, website control, YouTube monitoring. You can block apps, set daily app time limit, limit screen time, block inappropriate content. Available at the MAC App Store or Google Play.

A Smart Guide to Simple (Dumb) Phones and Watches. Dr Delaney Ruston lays out the details of four phones and three watches that have some capabilities that other smart phones and watches have but that have less connection to the internet and more parent control.

Yandex DNS filter. Parents can follow the instructions on this page to set up a filter through the DNS settings. All internet activity would go through this and it would filter out dangerous sites and not allow access to them.

Videos

For those of you who have a good internet connection, here is a sampling of the videos that are available to help teach children about internet safety. We are not necessarily endorsing any of them. The times beside each video link is in minutes and seconds, not hours and minutes.

Child Focus ‘E-safety’. This cartoon shows young kids what can happen when they click on a pop-up, including the need to get a parent to help. It has almost no talking in it. Ages 3-7. (1:52 minutes)

Keeping Kids Safe Online (Common Sense Media). Kids share the safety tips in this video. Ages 8-16. (3:21 minutes)

TMI (Too Much Information). This is a short video that makes an analogy between sharing personal information face to face and sharing it online. Ages 14-18. (1:25 minutes)

Internet Tips for Teens by Josh Shipp. Josh Shipp works to help parents understand teens and encourage teens to live up to their potential. You can check out his other videos at  http://joshshipp.com/. For the above video – Ages 14-18. (6:27 minutes)

5 Tips to Keep Your Child Safe on the Internet. Aimed at parents, this video also includes recommendations for plug-ins and kid-friendly browsers to make it safer. Ages 3-10. (2:21 minutes)

Online Safety: Keeping Safe on the Internet. Aimed at kids with tips on staying safe on the Internet. Ages 5-12. (3:06 minutes)

Internet Browsing for Kids. Made by Microsoft Training, this video is also aimed at parents. (3:22 minutes)

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