How My Family Deals with Our Children’s Safety Online #spon

This post was inspired and sponsored by Domain.ME

Since I work online and met my husband online, the Internet is a big part of my life. That means my kids are exposed to the Internet early in life. Safety has been very important to me, so today I’m going to share how my family chose to deal with our children’s safety online.

Blogging With Kids

Being a blogger means I share a lot of my life. Everything I write about comes from my personal experiences. Since I am a mom with four kids, my kids are included in most of those experiences.

My daughter enjoying a snack. This photo did go on my blog, but she knew it would be posted when she posed for the photo.

My kids are now all teens and tweens and they understand what I do and they know I share a lot of what goes on in our house. There have been times where my kids will say, “please don’t post this” and I always respect that. I try to be respectful and always ask if they are ok with me posting the photos or information. Most of the personal photos that I share of my kids is not shared publicly. I share it with close friends and family.

But there are times when I’m working on a campaign where my kids are involved, so those photos and the blog posts are very public. I’m conscious of what I say and realize their friends may read it. If it’s a sensitive topic, I will talk to my kids before I agree to do the campaign.

Children’s Safety Online

I didn’t sit my kids down one day and explain how to be safe online. Online safety started from the first moment my kids used a device that could connect to the Internet. While I did and I still do have software on all my kids’ devices, I wanted them to understand what could happen online.

My son practicing safety online (in college.)

They are growing up in a different world. It’s a connected world.  Sheltering them from the Internet was not good either. I wanted to teach them online safely. Whether I liked it or not, they were going to be online and I want them to understand the consequences to their actions.

I explained that people can pretend to be whomever they want online. Even if you see pictures, you have no idea who is on the other end. I showed them news stories about kids who thought they were talking to other kids and found out later they were not. I wanted them to see that it does happen. I take my children’s safety online very seriously!

Examples:

My family at a Washington Capitals game.

Photos like the one above are often seen on my blog and other social sites. Because we are at a public place and just posing, I’m ok posting photos like this online. I don’t tag my kids with their full names publicly.

Photos like this one of my daughter where they are more personal and close up, I asked her if she was ok with me posting it in an earlier blog post before I did it.

Bottom Line About Online Safety for Kids

The bottom line is that when I post anything online whether it’s my kids, friends, family or me, I try to think about whether I would want these photos of me posted for all to see. If the answer is no, I don’t post or I ask.

Disclosure: This children’s safety online post was inspired and sponsored by Domain.ME, the provider of the personal URLs that end in .ME. As a company, they aim to promote thought leadership to the tech world.