If you’ve heard of the ‘information highway’ you’ll know that social media is taking over much of this traffic. If you’ve heard of ‘surfing the web’, you’ve just dated yourself. Students just refer to the web as ‘being online’.

As students begin joining social media at a younger age, the online boundary shifts just a little more. When does it stop? What can we do? Does it need to stop?

Social media is ubiquitous in today’s society and can play a fantastic role in a child’s development. Be an active part of this and let your child share with you what is happening on Facebook or Club Penguin. Have frequent open discussions about the various types of comments posted by users on Grooveshark or YouTube. These are but a few popular social media apps that our children frequently visit. Share your favourite social media apps, comments, tweets or conundrums. It’s okay to let our kids know that we’re fallible and that we also enjoy social media, albeit different social media apps. And of course, within these wonderful conversations, build in talks about privacy settings, risks, consequences and ‘your rules’.  Be strong, yet gentle.

As your child grows older, the boundary will blur and morph. Let it be a natural, agreeable transition. Good luck!

Stacy Marcynuk
Director of IT, Curriculum
Kingsway College School

Some great online safety resources:

• Wired Safety – good, simple, catered to many different audiences.
• iKeepSafe – fantastic, lots of resources
• Kiwi Commons, Internet Safety – very pertinent and useful information