Local Parent Shares Tips for Online Safety
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The Chinook High School auditorium was the location of a parent-presented workshop on Wednesday evening, April 13. Community member, business-owner, and parent, Heather DePriest shared her experience with others in a presentation titled “Online Safety for Tweens and Teens.” Her message conveyed that parents can protect their children by setting healthy limits and by installing parental-control apps to help manage some of these tasks.
Earlier this year, DePriest reached out to Chinook School District Superintendent Fred Hofman about doing a training for parents on how to allow their children online, safely. Believing the topic relevant and important, Hofman granted her the space.
About her rationale for the presentation, DePriest stated: “This was simply me as a parent presenting. Since I have experience, I wanted to show other parents how to safely allow children online. If the guidelines I revealed help just one kid, then my presentation will have been a success in my eyes,”
DePriest opened her informational session by asking those gathered: “Do you really know what your kids are doing online?” From there, she reported statistics regarding online social media usage in today’s children and how those experiences are affecting them. Next, she described what youth are being exposed to when they go online and what parents can do to provide guidance and protection.
The first line of defense communicated by DePriest is to have proactive discussions about digital rules and online usage and then follow up with a method to monitor devices. Both Apple and Android provide tools such as Bark and Screen Time that parents can use at home and remotely to help shield their children from some of the impacts of social media bullying, for example, or from accessing age sensitive content. Web filtering applications (apps) like Bark and Screen Time enable parents to monitor text messages, YouTube, emails, and various social networks for potential safety concerns.
DePriest also taught her audience about some of today’s slang so that they can detect what their children are talking about when they’re using “teen speak” that sounds like a secret code.
To unveil additional content, DePriest showed several educational videos as well as a clip about a mother going undercover as an eleven year old girl. One audience member commented, “It was very eye-opening. We gained knowledge and insight into our children’s world.”
DePriest remained on-site after the presentation to help parents implement what was discussed. “It is never too late to learn and help protect our area youth,” she concluded.
For anyone who missed the presentation, DePriest shared a link to access one of the videos she used: http://www.childhood2movie.com/. Childhood 2.0: The Living Experiment is a documentary that dives into the real-life issues facing today’s youth. The film not only presents the dangers of cyberbullying, online predators, and suicidal ideation but points out that what children often see on social media, they are neurologically compelled to do.
