7 Top Tips for Parents and Teachers on Safer Internet Day

The following tips have been collated by Google experts for parents and teachers to help them start the conversation around the internet and online safety.

This Safer Internet Day, take the opportunity to have a conversation with your kids and pupils about being safe online with these top internet safety tips.

Tip 1: Ensure strong passwords

Passwords are the front line of protection against online threats, so they must be strong and hard for a hacker to guess. A strong password should be long (at least 8 characters), with a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols. Avoid using personal information such as your name or birthday, or simple combinations such as “1234” or “Password01”.

Longer, stronger passwords can be difficult for kids to remember so to get around this try tools such as Google Password Manager. Safari’s suggested password feature can help by suggesting (and remembering) strong, unique passwords for each new account.

Tip 2: Keep each account individually protected

From social media to news to online shopping, most people have multiple online accounts and remembering passwords for every account can be a pain. However, it’s crucial to maintain a different password for each one and to teach our kids to do the same as they learn to navigate the world online and start having more accounts of their own. Otherwise, one compromised account could expose your personal details across a range of services.

To check the strength and security of your accounts, encourage your family to use Google Password Checkup to scan all their account logins and find out if anyone has passwords that are weak or have already been compromised by hackers.

Tip 3: Don’t become phish food

Phishing is a serious threat, so families should always be on the lookout for suspicious emails, texts, and messages. Remind your kids that they should not accept files or open email attachments from unknown people. Make sure they know to never post or share phone numbers, home addresses, financial details or any other personal details. If in doubt, remind them that they should check any strange messages or emails with a parent, guardian or teacher.

Tip 4: Be a good digital citizen

People often forget about how the posts they share now could impact their future, but it’s crucial that young people are taught to consider how a seemingly harmless post today, may be misunderstood in a few years’ time and could have a lasting effect on how others view them. You can find useful games and other resources to help children learn how to be good digital citizens – and set a good example for their friends – through Google’s Be Internet Legends portal.

In Ireland, Google and Barnardos are also holding workshops in primary schools across the country to help kids understand how they and their friends can be internet legends.

Tip 5: Use social media responsibly

Young people should be as kind and respectful online as you would hope them to be offline. Encourage kids and pupils to be a force for good, setting an example for their friends by not liking or responding to potentially hurtful comments or posts. Young people should be taught to speak up against online bullying and tell an adult if they witness or experience it. They should also be aware of when their own actions could be harmful to others – if you wouldn’t say it out loud, don’t say it online!

Tip 6: Follow family rules

It’s important to set ground rules and a good example of the healthy use of technology. Parents should talk to their children about what kind of sites they visit, and assess how safe or suitable they are. Be clear with your kids and set family rules around which sites and services they can use. You can also restrict their access to certain websites through privacy controls, and use Google Family Link to set digital ground rules by, for example, managing their apps and setting time limits on internet use.

Tip 7: Look out for your digital wellbeing

The internet is an amazing learning resource and offers a great opportunity for children to learn and explore, but it’s especially important for young people that screen-time is balanced with other activities. To get this message across, why not try a series of digital wellbeing experiments to measure how much time the whole family spends online? This will help set realistic time limits and browsing rules as a family.