Enough Is Enough reminds us that June is Internet Safety Month! According the the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, 40% of kids in grades 4-8 reported they had at some point connected with a stranger online. Of those, 53% had revealed their phone number to a stranger, 21% spoke to a stranger on the phone, 15% tried to meet with a stranger, 30% texted a stranger from their phone and 6% revealed their home address to a stranger.
While it is ideal to keep young children from having phones or unsupervised access to technology, as they grow older, it becomes more and more difficult to protect them. However, you can teach your children how to protect personal information posted online and these skills will be valuable into adulthood.
Remind your children never to reveal personal or private information online. This includes information like events and locations, anything that could indicate a current location for tracking them. Inappropriate images that could be damaging to one's reputation should never be taken, and definitely never sent. Remind your children to always think before they post: there are no take-backs online. Nothing is truly private on the Internet; any and all information sent or posted online is public or can be made public.