Four Digital Literacy Skills for Parents to Teach Kids
As technology becomes more integral to your child’s education, it’s important to understand the benefits and potential drawbacks. Discussing digital literacy with your child is a great way to spark a conversation about online safety. It also creates opportunities to set expectations surrounding tech use. As a parent, it’s largely up to you to shape how your child uses the web. Luckily, we have the tips you need to get started on the right foot.
Four Digital Literacy Tips for Parents & Kids
Challenges can arise for parents as children grow old enough for screen time, online content, and general online safety to become concerns. Teaching your child to successfully manage these situations is key to helping them take full advantage of the technology at their fingertips and become good digital citizens. To help, we’ve compiled some of our favorite basic digital literacy tips for parents.
1. Digital literacy is based on digital citizenship
When your child goes online, they enter into a whole new community with its own rules and norms. Becoming a proper digital citizen takes time, but with regular prompting and practice, your child will quickly demonstrate responsible technology use. Consistently remind your child to never share passwords, avoid strangers, use trustworthy information sources, be respectful to others on social networks and other forums, and always report any suspicious or mean behavior.
Tip: These reminders may seem like basic knowledge to parents, but remember that it’s new information for children just beginning to use technology. Having conversations like this before your child enters the digital world helps establish ground rules and set expectations.
2. Practice media monitoring
Depending on what is accessible, a typical day for most children includes a mix of TV, Internet, social media, video games, and cellphone use. This is a lot of media exposure, especially since children are more susceptible to influences than adults. Make sure you know the type of content your child is viewing regularly, and determine if it is age-appropriate.
Tip: Evaluate media as a family. Give each family member an opportunity to share their values and discuss whether certain entertainment sources align with them. It also paves the way for deeper family discussions on how media relates to real-life situations, which will help your child develop a broader understanding of the world.
3. Discuss internet safety and online privacy
The Internet is a great resource for research, but easy access to data means it can be a gateway for others to get hold of your child’s information. Clearly communicate to your child what type of information is and is not okay to share online.
This part of digital literacy can go deeper than just making sure your child doesn’t share personal information; elaborate on what type of content is appropriate to share and post on social networks. Remind your child that the second something is posted online, they lose control over it. Anyone else can easily save or share the post (whether it’s an article, a piece of personal writing, photos, videos, or anything else), and your child may never know.
Tip: Take advantage of Internet privacy settings. Devices, browsers, and online programs (including social networks) offer options to limit the audience of posts, use nicknames or usernames, or turn off location settings. These small changes can make a world of difference to your child’s safety online.
4. Promote clear communication
Sometimes, the meaning of a message can be misinterpreted because of how it’s delivered. This is especially true when it comes to communication online, which doesn’t have the added context of face-to-face interaction.
Help your child understand that when something is posted online, the people who see it won’t necessarily interpret it in the way that they expect. For example, your child may post a Facebook status update intended to be lighthearted and funny, but it could hurt the feelings of a classmate who reads it.
Emphasize the importance of being thoughtful about any messages posted online, and coach your child to address issues that arise from ambiguous online communication in person to avoid more confusion and escalation.
Tip: Remind your child to always think before typing; this is a key piece of digital literacy. Encourage them to analyze the different ways their writing could be interpreted and be respectful at all times. The Internet should be an entertaining, informative, and safe community for everyone.
Digital Literacy Skills Take Practice
Building digital literacy skills and becoming a good digital citizen are certainly parts of the learning process. Digital literacy is also a moving target as technology and online communities continue to evolve. The key is to always keep respect at the forefront and treat online interactions like any other human interaction. With intentional conversations and regular reminders, you can help your child start building these skills today!
Looking for more tips? Visit Common Sense Media for helpful documents to promote safe, responsible, and effective technology use in your household. Also, check out this blog post to dive deeper into the importance of digital literacy.