Our children are growing up in a digital world and it’s a good idea to start building up their digital resilience, as many 3-4 year olds use the internet and almost half of parents worry about the time their children spend online. 

Allowing children to access appropriate content online shouldn’t be a worry provided that you take a balanced approach. There are some exciting and fun learning opportunities, as long as you talk about how they use the technology and the risks they may come across. Many tools are available to help you manage all your devices like parental controls, children’s profiles and other safety features. Make sure you know how to get help, like activating privacy settings and understanding how to make a report on the services, apps or games that they use.

It’s a good idea to make a family agreement so everyone knows how you are going to use the internet safely and positively.

Internet safety checklist for pre-school children:

✓ Explore together – explore and talk about the internet together so you can show them all the fun things they can do and learn

✓ Put yourself in control – install parental controls on your home broadband, so you can manage what your child can see and do and who they can interact with. Most internet –enabled devices also allow you to set parental controls

✓ Use passwords – keep your devices out of reach and set passwords on all your internet–enabled devices Then you’ll know when and where your child is accessing the internet and you can make sure they are not making additional purchases when they are playing games

✓ Search safely – use child-friendly search engines like Swiggle and Kids-search and YouTube Kids and add them to your favourites bar. Safe search settings can also be activated on search engines like Google, Chrome, Firefox etc

✓ Be involved – encourage them to use devices in a communal area so you can monitor how they are using the internet and also share in their enjoyment

✓ Help them learn through games – choose fun, safe and educational online games to play on sites like CBeebies, Disney Junior, Nick Jr and Fisher Price

✓ Set boundaries – set some rules about how long they can stay online

✓ Manage access - set your homepage to a child-friendly site like CBeebies and create a user account for your child on a family computer or device which only allows access to sites you’ve chosen