Internet Safety

Key points

Children aged 6-8 years can come across 4 kinds of risks online –
content, contact, conduct and contract.
Talking with children about internet use and safety helps to protect them from risks.
Practical ways to keep children safe include a family media plan, child-friendly search engines, reviews, privacy settings and parental controls.
You can also go online with children, be a role model for safe internet use, and talk with children about online behaviour.
When children feel you trust them, they’re more likely to come to you with online concerns.

Why internet safety matters for children

School-age children like going online to look at videos, play games and connect with friends and family. They might also be using the internet for schoolwork, homework or hobbies. School-age children can go online using computers, mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, TVs and other internet-connected devices, including toys.

Because school-age children are starting to be independent online and might go online unsupervised, there are more internet safety risks for them than there are for younger children. There are particular risks if your child uses the internet to communicate with others – for example, on messaging apps, on social media or in games.

When you take some practical internet safety precautions, you protect your child from potentially harmful or inappropriate content and activities. You also teach your child skills for using the internet safely on their own. And your child gets to make the most of their online experience, with its potential for learning, exploring, being creative and connecting with others.

As your child gets older and more confident and starts using the internet independently, you’ll need to review risks and strategies for handling them. Our article on internet safety for children aged 9-11 years has ideas.

Internet safety risks for school-age children

There are 4 main kinds of internet safety risks for children.

Content risks

For school-age children, these risks include things that they might find upsetting, disgusting or otherwise uncomfortable. This might include sexual content in games or movies, pornography, images of cruelty to animals, and real or simulated violence.

Contact risks

These risks include children coming into contact with people they don’t know or with adults posing as children online. For example, a child might be persuaded to share personal information with strangers, provide contact details after clicking on pop-up messages, or meet in person with someone they’ve met online.

Conduct risks

These risks include children acting in ways that might hurt others or being the victim of this kind of behaviour. For example, a child might destroy a game that a friend or sibling has created. Another conduct risk is accidentally making in-app purchases.

Contract risks

These risks include children signing up to contracts, membership agreements, or terms and conditions that they aren’t aware of or don’t understand. For example, children might click a button that allows a business to send them inappropriate marketing messages or collect their personal or family data. Or children might use a toy, app or device with weak internet security, which leaves them open to identity theft or fraud.

Child-friendly choices

These tips involve choosing child-friendly and age-appropriate technology and content to keep your child safe:

Set up profiles for different household members on streaming services, so your child can’t choose inappropriate programs.
Use child-friendly search engines like Kiddle or Kidtopia, or content providers like ABC Kids, CBeebies, YouTube Kids and KIDOZ, or messaging apps like Messenger Kids.
Check that games, YouTube channels, TV series and websites are appropriate for your child. You can do this by looking at reviews on Common Sense Media.
Be aware that even though a site or app is appropriate for young children, the advertising it shows might not be.

Boundaries and limits

These ideas involve using technological restrictions to keep your child safe:

Check privacy settings and location services, use parental controls, use safe search settings on browsers, apps, search engines and YouTube, and limit camera and video functions.
Block in-app purchases and disable one-click payment options on your devices.

Internet safety precautions are important. But it’s also important to help your child learn how to use the internet safely and responsibly and respond positively to online risks. Good ways to do this include going online together, being a role model, talking about appropriate content and behaviour, talking about privacy, and showing your child how to handle privacy and online purchases.

Talking about appropriate online behaviour

Talking with your child about appropriate and inappropriate online behaviour will help your child learn how to stay safe.

Here are things you can do:

Tell your child not to do or say anything online that they wouldn’t do or say face to face with someone.
Encourage your child to think before posting photos or comments.
Help your child to walk away from online arguments. You could say, ‘Friends can say things they don’t mean. It’s good to let people get over their moods and not talk to them online for a little while.

Being a good role model

Your child learns from you. This means you can model safe and healthy internet use by using digital media in the way you want your child to use it, now and in the future. For example, you might keep internet-connected devices out of bedrooms, and use technology for positive purposes like sending supportive messages to friends.

More Information about Internet Safety...

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