Technology

60044 readers

2790 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

211

Is there an extensive guide on how to protect kids on the internet? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

With the years I learned some rules of behavior on internet, but I wonder if there is some kind of extensive guide for parents who are not experienced with technology.

For example, I don't think content blockers are a good idea for teenagers. It works for kids, but teenagers will find workarounds because parents were lazy about teaching them the dangers and instead used a spyware app.

Here is a bad written list of some obvious rules:

Be anonymous
Use private social media accounts
Do not tell any personal information
Use ad blockers
Learn to recognize ads
Learn to recognize AI generated text and images
Learn to recognize scam
Understand consent
Learn to prevent blackmail
Learn to prevent grooming
Learn how fake pornography is and the unrespectful content

But I wish there was some kind of step by step guide

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One way would be to let them find out the hard way. Make sure they understand that everyone can see what they do and say and that they can find them back as a first base step. Let them have to click the right download button when downloading a mod for their game, you know. Make a setup so that if there's theres a big oopsie with their devices yours arent affected. And from there they will install an ad blocker or learn to find the download button. You could also make a fake blackmail or phishing email to see how they react (I've thought about making a fake phishing email for the elder ones in my family recently too...) and make it so that if they click, the screen goes black and red with crazy sounds.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My daughter isn't even two yet, but I'm definitely trying to plan a balance with this. It's a huge part of how I learned, and I don't think I would have learned nearly as much or as well otherwise.

At the same time though, I can't help but feel like ads and the internet are far more insidious than they were when I first went online in 2000.

Malware is much more sneaky. There's more spare resources for it to use without impacting performance. Ads have likewise had plenty of time to develop/advance/get worse.

Thankfully, ad blocking, anti-malware, and recovery tools have also advanced.

I think for the early days I'll have her on an isolated, locked down, pre-protected device for learning the basics of using a computer (mouse, files, the type of stuff they used to teach in elementary school).

Then slowly take off the training wheels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

That's how I learned too, but at first yeah obv training wheels are useful in order to not have to reinstall the os every 2 days. About malware though, it may be more sneaky in general but some sites I've seen recently still use the old ways, especially for game mods or file downloads, they still use the giant green download button trick. Also, she will grow up in the internet that we have today, so if she learns the old stuff, it may not be that useful

In any case, just for thinking of this, she will probably be one of the most tech savvy person in her generation! I hope she will be thankful