4 tips on how to ensure your Gen Alpha child's online security

September 4, 2024, Sticky Password
Password & security

There is no doubt that as parents we know our children better than anyone. But there are always new facts that still surprise us. These are details that have become so much part of our daily lives that we just don't notice or think about them.

Let's take a look at one of the key facts about our children. Understanding it will help us come to the realization that ensuring the digital and online safety of our children is one of the most important tasks of modern parents in the high-tech world.

Image Source: https://courses.britishlearning.uk/children-at-gadgets-the-good-and-the-bad/

Here’s the fact: children born in 2010 or later are representatives of Generation Alpha. What's so special about it?

this generation can truly be said to have been “born with gadgets in their hands”;
they master the art of switching cartoons on YouTube before being able to handle a spoon on their own;
they “live” on the Web and social media, and typically spend a greater amount of time in front of the screen than any other generation.

Although most Alphas still prefer to spend their time outdoors or in some other activities, the tendency changes as they are getting older. According to research conducted by Morning Consultant ^¹, 51% of younger Gen Alphas spend some time in front of the screen at least once a day. It is also stated that the average time that 65 % of children aged 8-10 years spend on social media is up to 4 hours a day. Numerous surveys conducted in the U.S. show this trend is growing.

If we parents managed the security bit (physical and online) first, then providing technology would fall into a framework that is manageable. Therefore, our uppermost task is to teach our kids the basic principles of online security and then provide them with smartphones, tablets and other fancy tools.

This is a real challenge for those who are not so deeply immersed in technology or were born before technology became part of the basic human settings. But don’t worry! We’ve made a list of tips that will help you to ensure your child’s online security.

Awareness is power

Talk with your children, be involved in their online and offline lives: good habits need to be learned from us — parents — not from anonymous online avatars. We all know that children learn what they see from us, their families — and not just what we tell them to do. Make sure that you are modeling for them in your own use of your devices the behaviors you would like them to have on their own devices.

This makes it easier to explain to them about the risks and threats that they can face on the Web. Cyberbullying, phishing, scamming, posting private information, data breaches and hacks, online predators, downloading malware, etc. — hazards that can dramatically affect your children’s lives. Awareness helps to avoid many risks in the future.
Information hygiene

We teach our children to brush their teeth, wash their hands and clean their room, but do we often talk to them about information hygiene? Careful and mindful filtering and consuming of information is as important as a clean face and tidy clothes, or even more in today’s digital world. The Internet provides access to a huge stream of the most various news, data, knowledge, facts and other stuff. Teaching our children to carefully filter and double check them — is our ultimate task, otherwise they can get lost in this information and misinformation space.
Instill safe online habits

UNICEF Parenting reminds us about the importance of leaving a positive “digital footprint” ^⁷. We should take it seriously and be mindful about what we and our children say and show online as it leaves a trail of information about us, a trail that is almost impossible to “delete forever”.

Encourage your kids to adopt positive online habits: being kind, respectful to their own as well as other people’s privacy, think twice before sharing information even with the closest friends. The same applies to proud parents as well: it is better to limit how many pictures of our children we share. Moreover, we should teach them to recognize harmful and negative content, and explain to our children how to act if they face abuse or harassment on the Internet.

A critical habit that we need to instill in our children is the reflex to come to us — their parents — with anything they are uncomfortable with online.
Password security

When it comes to our children’s online life, the right time to start talking with them about their passwords and security is the first time you hand them a smartphone. Passwords are the key to our personal information and sensitive data — this is what a child should be aware of when creating an account on social media or elsewhere on the Web. It’s important that our children see passwords as an important part of security and personal privacy and NOT as an obstacle to getting to a video quickly!

Not only we adults but even our youngest scholars have more than one or two accounts in different social media, websites and applications. This is inevitable in an environment where it has even become possible to get an education online. And here it is important to remember two key things:
- each account must have its own unique and reliable password;
- since storing these unique passwords in memory is “mission impossible”, you need to have a convenient and reliable tool to manage them all.
A password manager is a security tool that meets these two basic requirements and offers additional functions, such as Dark Web Monitoring, that help to ensure your and your children’s online safety.

Even though the little fingers of our Gen Alphas have already reached a mastery of digital devices that we can only marvel at, we — parents — are still the adults in the room! It remains our responsibility to establish the foundation of security and privacy without which our children might come to harm online.

4 tips on how to ensure your Gen Alpha child's online security

Awareness is power

Information hygiene

Instill safe online habits

Password security

References