School holidays mean kids and teens have more time at home, in child care, or in summer camp. All that extra free time can come with added screen time. Know2Protect’s Digital Boundaries campaign encourages youth, parents, and other trusted adults to set strong online boundaries.
Learn what steps you can take to keep your family or the youth you work with safe online.
Understanding the Threat
Online predators who use online games, social media, and other sites pose a grave threat to youth. It’s important to understand the dangers that the children and teens in your life face when they log on.
These risks include:
- AI Images and Chatbots: Offenders can use AI platforms to generate and share child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
- Online Addiction: Excessive screen time can pose a risk to a child’s mental health, sleep, and relationships.
- Sexting: Exchanging sexually explicit messages, photos, or videos. Sexting occurs between young people, but can unknowingly involve a young person and an adult.
- Online Predators: Predators can create fake accounts or pose as peers or trusted adults.
Digital boundaries can help families navigate the risks posed by the online world.
How to Set Healthy Digital Boundaries
Strong digital boundaries give kids the knowledge they need to keep themselves safe when scrolling the internet. To evaluate your digital boundaries, start by looking at:
Time Spent Online
Spending too much time online can pose a very real health and safety risk. Too much time on social media has been linked to depression, anxiety, and poor self-esteem. If screen time is interfering with a youth’s sleep, relationships, or well-being, it may be a sign of a deeper problem.
Encouraging youth to set healthy boundaries around their screentime can start with:
- Knowing what kids and teens are doing online
- Encouraging success with non-digital incentives, like a favorite book or an offline activity.
- Setting time limits around device use
- Leading by example with your own digital boundaries. This can include things like device-free mealtimes.
Safety Precautions While Gaming Or Using Social Media
Summer or holiday breaks often leave kids whiling away their free time on their favorite games or on social media. These online interactions can put them at risk. For example, they may encounter age-inappropriate content in a game or share personal information while chatting.
Healthy digital boundaries can help kids enjoy gaming while avoiding privacy and safety risks.
To set boundaries around gaming or social media use, consider:
- Reviewing maturity ratings to ensure game content is age-appropriate
- Researching and using parental control features on your child’s device or account
- Foster open communication around their experiences online
- Setting all accounts to private and rejecting friend requests from strangers
How to Talk to Children And Teens About Online Safety
Digital boundaries start with a conversation. Sharing your expectations and maintaining open communication can help children and teens feel supported and comfortable discussing online concerns.
Know2Protect offers resources for parents and other adults to help navigate this conversation in an age-appropriate way.
Key topics include:
- The importance of never posting personal information
- The risks posed by sexting and sharing intimate images, and the permanence of online data.
- Trusted adults or guardians they can turn to for help
- Steps they can take if a friend tells them about an inappropriate online interaction.
- How to protect themselves using privacy controls, such as restricting apps’ access to their location.
- Emphasize that if they find themselves in an inappropriate online interaction, it’s never too late to tell an adult and get help.
Next Steps: Take Training on Recognizing Online Sexual Exploitation
The Know2Protect initiative helps families, teachers, and other child safety advocates understand the risks of online sexual exploitation. Know2Protect partnered with Simple Learning Systems to create a free, 20-minute online training addressing this grave issue.
The training covers topics such as:
- How to recognize the behaviors and tactics used in online sexual exploitation
- How to identify the signs through child behavior
- How to respond and report suspected exploitation
The Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) training is available at no cost on the Mandated Reporter Training Platform.
