How are you protecting your family?
- Posted by Miranda Hernandez
- On August 8, 2019
We live in a magical and fast-paced world of instant messaging, face-timing, on-demand, and the worldwide web-ready to answer any question that pops into your mind. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It’s more and more common to meet people online, through online dating, forums, and gaming. With our constant online presence, it is easy to portray the life we want others to see.
Editing your profile picture to lose a couple of pounds, slapping a filter on that sunset photo to really make it pop, or altering your information to sound a bit more interesting are all easy and harmless ways to shift reality just a bit. Unfortunately, it is just as simple to become a different person when protected by the veil of reality that we call the internet.
How do we know that the people we communicate with day in and day out are truly the people we think they are? Do we know that “mutual friend” is safe? How do we continue to protect ourselves and our families from the dangers of imitators and impostors?
We want to believe that it could never happen to us. We hope we are careful enough, that we have the best of password protections and parental control settings. Yet, this happens every day to people just like us. Connections online start off friendly and exciting. Light conversation becomes constant contact. “What are you doing?” quickly turns to “We should meet.” We ourselves have had uneasy feelings and made attempts to create space, protection, or block people, but how are we protecting our families from these same threats.
Tools that can help you protect your family
With the massive advance in technology, we have so many tools available to help us protect our loved ones. The picture above is an amazing app called “Bark” that operates in the background of your child’s device. Watching for cyberbullying, adult content, sexual predators, and more by monitoring social media, text messaging, emails, and location. Bark offers a 7-day trial followed by a monthly charge of only $9/month. You can find out more here: https://www.bark.us/
Below are just a few effective websites for children that teach them the importance of internet safety.
All too often we get horrible phone calls from parents who found their child on a private chat room or speaking to a stranger. With a bit of education, you can feel confident in the safety of your loved one. Get back to breathing easy knowing your child is safe, and feel prepared for important conversations about internet safety. You do not have to be a technology wizard to protect your family, you just have to be aware.
Contact TeachGeek today to find out more about how you can keep your family safe from the online cyber world!
