This morning I delivered a seminar at St Mark’s Pennant Hills on the topic ‘How to protect our children online’. Thanks for having me!
Below are a list of resources I collected as I researched for the seminar, that I share with you now for further reading. If you’ve discovered other useful resources, let us know in the comments section below. I will continue to add to this resource as I become aware of other material.
If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email – steve@communicatejesus.com.
First, a recap on the 13 tips for protecting children online:
- Identify and communicate your values
- Model these values
- Introduce your children to technology
- Understand the mediums
- Use anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware software
- Use accountability software and filters
- Know what your children are doing
- Keep communication lines open
- Be proactive in teaching your children
- Develop a set of family rules
- Encourage them to visit safe places online
- Pray for your children, and children everywhere
- Be gracious when they stuff up
1. Resources for parents
- Facebook’s Safety Center (section for parents)
- Facebook will add a ‘panic’ button for UK teens
- Parents section at Center for Child Exploitation and Online Protection
- Five ways to protect your family online (an article from Covenant Eyes)
- Under 7′s searching for porn (report conducted by Symantec)
- Chatting with kids about being online (PDF)
- How best to protect kids from online porn
- A Click Away: Preventing Online Child Porn Viewing
-
Google’s Digital Literacy Tour (with guidebooks, videos and handouts)
- Beat Bullying
- Common Sense Media
- Internet Safety from Common Sense Media
- Wired Safety
- NetAlert Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety (PDF)
- Stop Cyber Bullying
- Pornography – the difference being a parent makes
- Should parent’s care about their child’s Google ranking?
- ‘For Safety’s Sake’ – research report by Microsoft Australia
- Be Web Aware (including safety tips by age and activities for the home)
- Thinkuknow (resources for 5-7’s, 8-10’s, 11-16’s, and parents). There’s also a UK site.
- Ideas for creating family rules for Internet Use
- How advertisers are stalking your children
- Childnet International
- Facebook for Parents
- Raising kids in a digital world (for infants students, for middle and high school students)
- How shall we protect our children online? (a discussion on the Government’s proposed internet filter)
At the seminar this morning I also met a lady who works with Collective Shout. It is:
“a new grassroots campaigns movement mobilising and equipping individuals and groups to target corporations, advertisers, marketers and media which objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services.
Collective Shout will name, shame and expose corporations, advertisers, marketers and media engaging in practices which are offensive and harmful especially to women and girls, but also to men and boys.”
Keep up the good work.
On a related topic, I also spotted this in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning: ‘Here’s a spray of my own: this stuff really is on the nose. ’Lads’ ads’ are ironic, we are told. They are also brutally offensive.’
Our society really doesn’t know how to define masculinity and feminity, apart from crude, sexualised stereotypes.
2. Internet Filters and Accountability Software
- X3 Watch
- Covenant Eyes (recommended for filtering and monitoring internet use)
- Safe Eyes
- Family Shield web filter
- Internet filter reviews
- Internet content filtering and blocking
- Reputation Defender (searches the internet for references to your child)
3. Resources for teaching children and teenagers
A number of the sites listed in section 1 contain resources that are helpful for children and teenagers,
- A Thin Line
- Facebook’s Safety for Teens (remember, 13 is the minimum age to have a profile on Facebook)
- 11 tips to help you avoid sexual immorality (aimed at youth, and on youth site, Fervr)
- CyberPigs (games to teach 8-10 year-olds about online safety)
- Wired with Wisdom online game
- NetSmatzKids
- Net Cetera (a guide to chatting with kids about being online)
4. Pornography
I am convinced that pornography is one of the most destructive scourges of our age. More and more, research is revealing the addictive impact of pornography on the brain. Here are a couple of articles on this topic:
- Slave Master: How Pornography Drugs and Changes Your Brain
- Four Posts on Porn
- Porndemic (a list of resources for battling porn)
- Breaking porn addition (part 1 and part 2)
- The Psychology of Porn (two-part video)
Awesome job this morning Steve. It was good meeting you too! It is so good meeting others who stand up for our children!
It would be great if some of your followers had a look at Collective Shout. If they sign up for Collective Shout and then join the community groups (such as Collective Shout Sydney), they can keep up with what is happening in their area and we will help them with what to do if they see something offensive to families and children in their city!
Keep up your great work!
Collett (Life Smart Solutions & Collective Shout)
Steve,
Thanks for this, I plan to pass on the link to our congregation members.
Of all the articles/links listed above, what would you say were your 2-3 top reads/resources for parents?
Hi Sandy, there’s lots there for different audiences and purposes, but I think parents should check out:
a) Covenant Eyes. It’s a great filter/accountability check, and highly recommended for families.
b) Think U Know. The UK version is more comprehensive, and has useful resources for parents, plus links for different aged kids.
c) Be Web Aware. Similarly, this site has some good intro information for parents, which I think for most, will be a good start for getting their heads around some of the latest applications of the internet!
I also enjoyed the talk at St Marks, thanks so much Steve. Where can i get a copy of the levels of communication – with speaking face to face the 1st and texting the last? That would be useful to show to my teenager!!
regards
vivian
Hi Vivien, great you could make it along. Here’s a link to the diagram (click here)