Digital Citizenship & Online Safety: Teaching Kids Responsible Behavior on the Internet
Teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely and responsibly by learning digital citizenship.
What Is Digital Citizenship?
Digital citizenship involves using the internet safely, ethically, and responsibly.
The components of digital citizenship are:
Online Safety
To navigate the internet safely, you must protect yourself online. This involves using strong passwords, guarding your personal information, and reporting cyberbullying.
Respecting Others
Even if you aren’t looking someone in the face, your words make an impact. Digital citizenship involves treating others (even strangers) with kindness and respect.
Finding Credible Sources
If you read it on the internet, that doesn’t make it true!
Digital citizenship involves learning to distinguish between credible and unreliable sources.
Crafting a Digital Footprint
When you walk down a dirt path, you leave a trail of footprints.
The same is true online; there is a record of where you go, what you do, what you say, and what you post. That record lasts forever.
Digital citizenship involves understanding the impact of your digital footprint on your personal and professional life.
Creating Balance
Screens can absorb your time. Digital citizenship refers to maintaining a healthy relationship with technology.
You must balance your time online with offline activities, such as sports, art, rest, and face-to-face interactions with others.
How to Teach Digital Citizenship and Online Safety to Kids
Take advantage of these free and helpful teaching resources.
Google’s Be Internet Awesome
Be Internet Awesome is a collection of free and interactive games that teaches kids the various aspects of digital safety.
Kids (best for ages 7-12) navigate through “Interland” and visit the mountain lands.
Kind Kingdom
The game teaches being kind and respectful to others online.
Reality River
This game helps kids distinguish credible sources from unreliable ones.
Mindful Mountain
This game targets understanding digital footprints and sharing information.
Tower of Treasure
This game focuses on online safety.
Common Sense Education
This K-12 Digital Citizenship program was designed in partnership between Common Sense Education and Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Best for educators, this site features lessons plans for various grade levels: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.
For each of the grade groupings, you can download free lesson plans and activities to teach the various aspects of digital citizenship.
The program even features suggestions for reinforcement activities for families.
NetSmartz
Developed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NetSmartz features resources for parents, educators, and kids.
For educators, the site offers lesson plans and slide presentations on various topics related to digital citizenship.
For parents, NetSmartz includes statistics, facts, and starter questions to begin these conversations with your kids.
The videos for kids also come with comprehension questions for afterward.
FBI Safe Online Surfing Challenge
Through games, kids in grades 3-8 learn about cyber safety and digital citizenship through the FBI’s SOS Challenge.
Although any student (in a traditional school or homeschooled) can play the games and learn the lessons, the FBI hosts a special feature for classrooms.
Teachers can sign up to take a montly game-based test that shows what they have learned from the site.
The class that does the best in their area receives a visit from a real FBI agent!
Tips on Teaching Digital Citizenship and Online Safety
Although the above resources are wonderful at providing instruction, you need to go further to teach digital citizenship.
Learn Yourself
Your kids cannot be the only ones who learn about digital citizenship.
Make sure you know what they know!
You can complete some of the games and activities together, or do them separately and then talk about them (use the talking points for topics on NetSmartz to get started).
Reinforce the Lessons Periodically
Digital citizenship is not “one and done.”
This topic is so important that it warrants reinforcing the lessons periodically.
Do this every year as part of your homeschool or classroom instruction.
As a parent, play some of the games together and have an informal conversation to reiterate the important points.
Kids change over time, and so does their internet use. Ongoing conversations make sure you are discussing the relevant topics.
Check Up and Check In
Checking up on your child’s online usage and behavior is vital.
You should know the apps your child uses, the sites they visit, and the games they play.
Better yet, have them show you what they enjoy doing. You, too, could become a Minecraft fan!
Make sure you are monitoring screen time as well. Screens are designed to be engrossing; most kids (and teens) need external limits to keep their screentime down.
Set Up Parental Controls
Parental controls help your child stay safe.
Apps like Bark allow a variety of parental controls from blocking certain websites, allocating screentime, and monitoring content.
You can monitor texts, social media content, and internet searches to make sure your child is using the internet safely and responsibly.
Every video game console also has parental controls; check those out! These settings allow you to restrict certain games, disable messaging, and prevent spending in the game store.
Teaching Digital Citizenship and Cyber Safety to Kids
The internet is here to stay. Kids needs to learn digital citizenship and online safety.
As kids grow, the way they use the internet will change as well.
Be ready for what’s to come by introducing, referencing, and reviewing these digital citizenship lessons.
