Have you ever heard the term ‘digital footprints‘? Surprisingly, a large number of Internet users do not know this word. In fact kids, the regular online visitors, are not aware of this term.
We are all living in a tech-centric era and our virtual life is becoming as important as real-life. Managing online reputation and healthy virtual life is crucial for all of us. To do that, we need to understand digital footprints.
What Is a Digital Footprint?
It is a trail of every activity you perform online. Your browsing history, social media activities, your online subscriptions, shopping and almost everything on the Internet with your name on it.
Our kids hardly think before accessing different online sources so their prints are wide and prone to be misused by online predators. Here are a few tricks that every parent should follow to safeguard a child’s digital footprints.
8 Ways To Safeguard Digital Footprints Of Your Kids
Let Kids Know Why Digital Footprints Are Important?
Children are digital natives, they spend maximum time surfing something online. They do not even know their carefree surfing leaves their footprints everywhere online. So the first step parents should take is making kids learn the importance of safeguarding their surf trails.
- Let your kids know everything about digital footprints. Discuss its meaning and importance with your child.
- Make them aware of various cybercrimes. If necessary, give them a few cyber safety tips.
Managing Safe Online Trails
Every parent should demonstrate digital citizenship to kids. How kids can maintain decent online presence should be discussed.
- Managing online footprints is not about privacy, anonymity or safe practices but a larger part of it is to maintain and leave good trails.
- Kids need to understand that anything once posted online will stay there forever. That’s why they need to make sure the prints they leave are good ones.
Understand Privacy Settings
A child’s online reputation mainly depends on social media platforms. Because it’s the major source of kid’s Internet engagements.
- Promoting kids to put all their social media accounts especially Facebook (being the most influencing social media giant) on a quick analysis might be the most important step towards helping them manage good trails.
- You and kids should respect the policies and guidelines of such a platform.
- The security privacy, who can see/ comment on your posts, location details are a few sections that can ensure safe trails.
The Benefits Of A Strong Password
A strong Password is everything. It is the security key to all online activities.
- A safe, strong and hard to forget password is the basic step of cybersecurity. Children should know that their password should be a mixture of numbers, upper and lower case, special characters and letters.
- Additionally, they should change it frequently, avoid using the same or identical passwords on different stands and kids should never share it with anyone to ensure their digital safety.
Educate Them With A Few Healthy Online Habits
Digital footprints are like tattoos. Once the body has the impression of tattoo marks it’s hard to hide them. Similarly, the digital tattoo kids get online will stay with them forever. So it is better to form some healthy habits.
- Avoid talking to a stranger. A stranger is a danger and can ruin a kid’s online life.
- Parents should make kids smart enough so that they can differentiate between genuine and fake profiles.
- Also, we should train kids to unfollow all the skeptical pages/profiles. Tell them not to click on any shady links that lead to unknown third-party platforms. These hacking tricks can threaten safe digital trails.
Be A Part Of Your Kid’s Digital Life
The simple yet effective way to guard a kid’s virtual trail is to share their digital lives.
- It is so challenging to restrain the children, particularly taming the teen child is the most difficult. But Internet safety of children should not be compromised in any case.
- Parents can make it easy by being a kid’s digital partner. You can play his preferred video games online, follow his social media accounts, surf some fun websites together.
- By participating in a kid’s online life you will easily guard their online trace and your bonding with the child will also get deeper.
Click With Care!
A single wrong click on any dubious link or page is potent enough to ruin our child’s online reputation. Therefore it is of utmost importance to teach kids that they should click with great care.
- Educate your child on how hackers use various links to misguide the user and get personal data. These data can be used to manipulate the user in the future.
- Kids should also know that every post once shared on social media platforms, will stay there permanently unless removed. Even if you delete it from your account it is already stored in the server of a particular site.
- So before you click that share button think twice and always click with care.
Use Parental Control Means
With smart parental control apps like Bit Guardian Parental Control, parents can protect kid’s digital lives 24/7.
- Parents can take control of kids’ virtual life with parental control apps. These apps help monitor, restrict and safeguard kid’s lives online.
- Excessive screen time may invite various Internet scams. With the use of parental control apps, parents can limit kid’s screen life and in a way can help them maintain safe and good digital trails.
- Want to put an end to kid’s app cravings? With the effective use of App Install Block and App Block features of Bit Guardian, parents can restrict a kid’s app usage. This way you help them avoid using any shady app and inappropriate content that may harm them virtually.
- With kid’s safety apps, parents can monitor the kid’s virtual life remotely. Now before your kids click on something, you will be there to guard their digital lives.
On a concluding note, here we recommend using Bit Guardian Parental Control to give your child a guarded and safe digital exposure. Secure your child’s online reputation and let them enjoy the perks of digital activities by forming safe online habits.
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