Keep your family cyber safe

By Helen Maisano

Ensuring your kids are safe and protected is top of mind for any parent. With more of young people’s lives being spent online for schooling, socialising, and gaming, the need to provide relevant and helpful information to support students to be cybersafe has never been greater.

Parents also have a big role to play in keeping their kids safe online by setting ground rules and helping to educate their kids about safe online habits and boundaries.

Yet the ever-changing world of technology may make them feel they don’t know enough to help their family navigate the online world in a safe way.  Last year, due to increased Covid lockdowns, we saw a big increase in cyberbullying and sharing of inappropriate images.  Through our work in schools with the Digital Thumbprint program, we’re hearing this can start as young as primary school, so setting foundations with young children and reinforcing learning with teens is important. 

Tips for parents

It’s important for parents to feel empowered to help their kids be safe while they’re online. The digital world shouldn’t be any different to other parenting aspects of their kids’ lives – parents are central to setting boundaries and making decisions about how their family interacts online.

Here are some helpful guidelines that parents can use:

• Be mindful of what is information is shared via posts
• Create strong passwords and use different passwords for different sites
• Never give passwords to someone else
• Update social media settings to ‘private’ – this can stop strangers from seeing your posts or contacting you directly

Digital safety conversations

Parents can also remind their kids that they should never speak with someone online that they don’t know in real life – including in games or fun apps. They never know who they’re really speaking to, and these apps sometimes don’t allow you to be ‘private’ or to disable the chat function during a game. Kids should never share personal information in a chat, especially with someone they don’t know in real life. 

If someone doesn’t use their real voice or doesn’t seem to be who they say they are – kids should not continue these conversations.

Parents may find it difficult to start a conversation with their kids about digital safety, so we have created some conversation starters to consider:

• Have you ever chatted with someone you didn’t really know?
• What questions did they ask you and how did you respond?
• What about you delete any ‘friends’ you’ve never met or don’t really know and block their profiles?
• Did you know that people can track where you go to school, play sport, hang out, as well as other personal information just through your Insta (and other) posts and feeds? Let’s change our social media profiles to ‘private’ so only people we know see our posts?

Perhaps one of the most powerful things parents can do is become acquainted with the apps their kids are using. Most parents should be able to navigate through their children’s online applications. You can always refer to each apps Help section to guide you.

Try out the apps, see how they work including live chat in gaming apps. See how it feels, look at the options available, such as chat rooms.  Whether it’s a live chat or different elements of the game.

The time you invest in coming up to speed with your kids’ digital worlds will help you to better understand how to keep them safe online.

Learn the lingo

Sometimes the hardest part of understanding what young people are doing on their apps and games is understanding their language. The terms they use can be confusing – and sometimes this is intentionally to keep parents in the dark.

How many of these terms do you know?

• Cap = Truth, this is the truth, ‘No cap’ – no lies, for example, ‘That’s cap’ – this is the truth
• PAW = Parents are watching
• PIR= Parents in room
• 9 also means the same thing – it’s like a backwards P for parent.
• Salty = angry, bitter or frustrated about something
• Tea = the gossip or sometimes the ‘truth’ (T for truth). To sip tea or sit back sipping tea is to mind your own business and watch the drama unfold.
• Thirsty = Being desperate for something or someone.
• Tilted = Angry, annoyed, usually from gaming

Like social media trends, the lingo changes all the time, but these can keep you across some current trends that may mean your child needs some support. 

If things go wrong

There’s no longer a separation between the “real world” and the “digital world” and behaviour online can be hurtful and inappropriate.  The key thing is to ensure your child feels supported and knows who they can turn to for support.  This can be you, a caregiver, teacher, or even an older sibling who can help. 

Through our Digital Thumbprint program, we support young people to learn who and how they can report cyberbullying and inappropriate behaviour.

The first step is through the app or game itself. 

• Instagram and Snapchat: Click on the options for the post (three dots) and selecting ‘Report’
• TikTok: Hold down your finger on the video and select ‘Report’

You can also report to the eSafety Commissioner, a government agency committed to keeping all people safe online, and they are especially helpful for young people.

The eSafety Commissioner can give you advice, contact the social media platform to make sure it gets taken down, work with your school, parents or police, and make sure that the problem is solved in a way that is suitable and comfortable for you.

Digital education for your child’s school

Through our Digital Thumbprint, Optus provides free, curriculum-aligned workshops that teach primary and secondary students to participate safely online, with the tools they need for positive, responsible and authentic experiences. The program has been endorsed by the eSafety Commissioner as a Trusted eSafety Provider and covers a range of topics like cyber security, cyberbullying and respectful relationships, digital discernment, technology and balance, and online identity.

So far, over 430,000 Aussie kids have completed a Digital Thumbprint workshop in metro and regional Australia. If you would like the program to come to your child’s school, then let us know here. 

Helen Maisano is the Director, Group Sustainability at Optus.

Register for our workshops here:
https://www.digitalthumbprint.com.au/digital-workshops/

Find more about The Office of the eSafety Commissioner:
https://www.optus.com.au/connected/families/meet-the-esafety-commissioner

If you feel a young person in your life needs help and support, please let them know that Kids Helpline is there for them at any time. Find out more at https://kidshelpline.com.au/ or dial 1800 55 1800.

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