
How do I teach my child about internet safety for kids?

McAfee ® Total Protection comes with McAfee ® Safe Family, which gives you many of the parental control features we’ve talked about here, as well as award-winning antivirus to help protect your home devices and network.īut even with bulking up your protection at home, at some point, your child will be going online on a different device or network, maybe with one of their friends, that doesn’t have your parental controls set. That’s why it’s a great idea to consider bundling your parental control and cybersecurity software, so they can work together to keep you and your family safe online. Parental controls can not only limit screen time and restrict explicit content, but also help prevent cybercrime and data theft by turning your child away from risky online behavior that can lead to a breach. According to a 2019 study by Pew Research Center, 52% of parents use parental controls to restrict access to certain sites.Īnd there’s a good reason for that: when used in partnership with parenting and guidance, parental controls can help encourage healthy online habits in your kid and help protect your home network and devices. If you’re asking yourself this question, it’s important to know you’re not alone. These tools won’t block every malicious site out there, so you may want to consider finding an additional parental control solution to improve your child’s online safety. Check out your child’s social network account settings to change who can find them. Social Network Privacy Settings: Keep your child’s activity and information restricted to just their friends and control who can follow them. Check out your search settings to set it up, or turn it on for all users under 13 through the Google Family Link app. Google SafeSearch: Filter sexually explicit content from Google search results. Click the “Restricted Mode” button to turn this feature on or off. On any YouTube page, find the footer that lists your settings. YouTube Safety Mode: Blocks mature content. To get started, search for Google Family Link on Google Play.
Free child protection software for mac android#
Google Family Link (for Android devices): Set controls and screen time limits remotely, from your device. From there, even if you share a device, you can set a variety of controls. If your kid has their own iPhone, add your kid's device to your “family” with the phone’s Screen Time settings. IPhone Parental Controls: Restrict certain content and apps and set screen time limits.
Free child protection software for mac free#
Sometimes, even with the best intentions, children can stumble upon dangerous sites and content without meaning to, so it’s great to set up online safety for kids with a few free tools on some of your kid’s favorite sites, apps, and devices. How do I keep my child safe on the internet? If you do decide your child is ready to set up accounts and apps, or if they’re ready for a phone or device of their own, there are a few ways to help keep them safe.

But these are just guidelines: it’s up to you as a parent to determine if your 13-year-old is ready to access these apps and sites. Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube all require users to be at least 13 years old. Luckily, many sites and apps, especially social media sites, have age restrictions that can help guide you. It’s important to research age-appropriate apps and sites to understand when your child may be ready to use them and to assess if your child is mature enough to do so. And even if you do restrict access at home, by the time they reach kindergarten, they’ll likely start accessing it at school.īut just because your child can access the internet, doesn’t mean they need to access the entire internet.

There’s no magic number to determine at what age your child will be ready for the internet, but according to Child Trends, 41% of children age 3 to 5 and 57% of children age 6 to 11 use the internet at home. At what age should a child have access to the Internet?īefore going any further, determine if your child is ready to go online.
