Parental Controls in a Digital World

[0:00] I'm going to talk about is how part of the process is digital citizenship, digital socialization, staying safe online, and using parental controls.

[0:12] ! So, as we talked about earlier, there are positives in technology. And what we're going to do is talk about some things that are positive in technology. We're going to talk about technology and plagiarism. These are things that you have to, this is all part of the parental controls in digital life that you have to live with your child, with your children.

[0:51] Online etiquette. Looking at your digital footprint. And one of the things to go into using technology safely is you can help yourselves by using these tools such as online calendaring.

[1:15] I know, for instance, Pastor Moisey said to me earlier this year that I'm going to try to do everything on the cloud. I say, okay. But part of that is online calendaring. Then how do you deal with mobile phones?

[1:29] Sorry. Teachers can use things such as class dojo, which is, which is helps, keeps children and it helps you talk and collaborate with your students or your child. And so if the schools that your child is attending doesn't have some type of online policy or something, you could probably introduce that in your next PTA meeting. Weather apps. They keep an eye on the weather. It keeps you safe. Messaging. You could talk to your doctors online and get so forth. So this is all things that are positive in technology.

[2:14] You could also monitor your child's internet activity and do homework online. And you could monitor your home remotely or receive emergency alerts. Staying safe online.

[2:28] Pastoral safety is a key. It's not only for your child, but it's also for you. Remember the presentation. The child says, I put my foot, my, my thumbprint when she gets your pastoral.

[2:42] Imagine the, as Donald Trump says, the big fat guy sitting in the basement doing something else. So your digital, your password safety is important, not only for your child's safety, but also for you, for your safety.

[2:55] We're being forced right now if you don't want to stay on the, well, if you don't want to be charged, the extra fees for going on the bank line to the teller, they're forcing you to online banking. So you want to keep those types of things safe.

[3:06] Check the website privacy settings. Every website has a privacy setting. And you want to ensure that the sites that your child is going to, you want to check to see what settings that are available that you can set to help bring that safety online for that child.

[3:26] Facebook has something if your child is on Facebook. I necessarily don't agree with having children under the age of 18 on Facebook. And, but if you do, there are some things that you can do to ensure the, ensure the safety, depending on the age of the, and if they are like, I think even if you're a teenager, but you have to, I think you're going to have to weigh that out and look at your family situation.

[3:55] But there's a default setting when you do sign up with Facebook call, and it's for minors. It's called friends and friends. And this may pose a risk for your, for your minor, if they're under 13, I would say under 15. And what that, what that allows you to do is a black hole basically allows other persons to link into your child's Facebook page without, without having to do anything special.

[4:22] So one of the things that you want to do is go into your Facebook settings and change the default setting if you have a minor that's on Facebook. And you could turn on and off location-based services. If your child has a mobile phone or device that has, that can track where they are, that can be a safety concern as well.

[4:46] And so you want to do things like being able to know how to turn and off location-based services because they may have gone to the site and then suddenly it may not be that much over here.

[4:58] Maybe in larger countries that may be an issue. But as we can see, we had an incident maybe early this year where several children were harmed. And I don't know if Cameron recall, if they ever found a perpetrator for that.

[5:15] But I mean that could be an incident where children could be targeted based on some person realizing that they have an app because you can purchase these tools from hackers and so forth that can track and it could, you know, be something where they want to hook up with your, with your child.

[5:33] So choose your apps very carefully. And part of choosing your apps very carefully is reading the documentation and what the app is trying to promote.

[5:51] And there's nothing more than having a free app. And there's nothing more than having a free app, but free apps, what they call freemium apps, they either will start to, they'll extract information that you may not be considering, considered very harmful, but they will do certain harm to your, to your mobile device or your, or your computer.

[6:14] And I always get it all the time. My computer is always running slow. I just got this computer. Or I have this computer and it's just running slow. It's like molasses.

[6:27] And as soon as they, I open up the laptop or the computer and then I see like five different things pop up. I, I, I don't have to go more than five minutes without making that assessment that you have some app on there that's, you may have thought was not harmful or was free.

[6:47] And then you say, they promise you, I'll speed up your computer for free and so forth. It's, um, putting on certain apps would be harmful for your devices, not only for, um, performance, but also for safety. Um, be careful who is your friend on the social network. You know, not everybody's your friend on the social network.

[7:10] So you want to, you want to, you want to be able to teach this to your, teach this to your child is to be able to, to educate them as to, if they are on a social media, how to have a, how to have a, how to have a true friends, friends network if they do decide, if you do decide to go on, go that route.

[7:25] Um, post comments online as if it will never be erased. Um, I think that's coming into error. We could see cases where, um, things are being regurgitated from 19, 60 something that's coming back to, to, to haunt, to, to haunt people nowadays in, in jobs. Um, I recall there was an incident where, it wasn't a child, but it was more so an adult. Uh, he was, he, it was a broadcaster and he was, he was a broadcaster for a major university and he had posted, um, that he didn't like the, um, what the university president was doing at the time.

[8:07] Um, and now they were going to give him a, they were going to, they had offered him the post to be the athletic director and somebody ended up finding a post where he did that he didn't like the director at some point.

[8:21] Um, and he had to apologize and then he was released from that, from that job. And so, Google has something rare. They don't erase information. If you go into your Gmail, most of us may have Gmail, you will see that they have something in there called, um, archive.

[8:38] But you'll see where it says all mail and it just doesn't seem to go away. Well, there's a history that's always being tracked or kept along with the U.S. Um, National Congress, the library, they, they archive everything that's being posted on the internet.

[8:54] Um, so you could go back no matter what. Be polite. Um, and cause your children to be polite on the internet. Um, avoid comments that may violate popular website policies, but also any local laws.

[9:07] Um, we see that we are trying to make laws. And we see that we are trying to make laws over here now based on commentary that's done. But, um, these things can come back and, as we say, bite you if they, um, if you violate, um, website policies.

[9:23] And be an example for others. Share with them when they're online how to be an example for others. That will encourage a greater community of safety.

[9:33] Um, and, um, some guides. One of the things that I think that's important for us as parents that we have to be able to engage and talk to our children.

[9:49] And, um, one of the things that I'm going to talk about some guides that, that, that would be, um, that would be, that I think we should use, that you need to probably set and, and look in terms of your family unit and see exactly how you're going to be able to, um, you need to create a digital environment when you have a lot of devices with your children.

[10:16] And, and, and these are some basic guidelines, I think, that you can use. I may have some overlap here because in another slide I'm going to really come back to the same thing, but it's more or less a discussion point.

[10:27] Uh, set some rules and guidelines to be followed. Set time limits, for instance. Um, set where the devices can be used. Um, my daughter has an iPod.

[10:40] You know, if your daughter has a, or son has a tablet, maybe. Maybe just put it this way, and I think I mentioned it when we were in the talk show. If they have a room in your house, for example, do you give them a key and tell them to lock the door and you can't get in?

[10:56] No. So, likewise, set some limits for where they can use the device. If they're going to use the device, make sure that the room door isn't, they're not using it in the room. Or if they do, the door remains open.

[11:09] If you have a computer, then have the computer in the room. Just don't, this is how, if you're not technology savvy, you could do some practical things to make it easier to monitor and see exactly how that, how they're using, how they're using the technology.

[11:24] So, just set some ground rules and discuss it with them. If you're going to use the technology, you have to be in the living area. Um, you can't use it after 8 o'clock at night.

[11:35] You, you have to, you can use it to get all your notes from your friends and after 7 o'clock, that's it. Um, so set some ground rules, um, like that. If you give them, uh, if you give them a device or they have access to the device, enforce and discipline when the rules are broken.

[11:55] Um, there was a case where my, my niece said, um, we, my daughters and their, my, um, good friend, family friend, we had this general rule where, you know, they weren't allowed to sign up to any social media web, any social media site.

[12:12] Um, so, the oldest one said, um, we found that they were on, they were, they, they had a post, they were on now on Facebook. So, this is what she said, um, she said, oh, I didn't sign up for it.

[12:24] My friend did it for me. So, that's, you know, so, but she still broke the rule. And so, she had to face the penalties for that.

[12:35] Um, so, when you establish rules, enforce the rules if there are some digital, um, policies that you have set. Make sure it's discussed up front and clearly with them.

[12:46] If they are, if the child is online, encourage your child to create a digital, um, reputation. Meaning, post positive things. Continue to show them how to post positive things.

[12:57] If they, if they baked a cake or they know how to make kong salad a different way or something like that, post those types of, um, positive things. And that, because what happens is, is when your child gets ready for university, the, you know, the admissions team is going to track what they, what they have done.

[13:18] And, and, you know, we all would, are going to highlight the positive things in the letter that you write to the university, for instance, or to the, or to the HR department for a job.

[13:29] And then suddenly, uh, these things come back and, and, and, and will show up eventually. Be a role model in, in yourself in the digital world.

[13:43] Uh, it's no use you putting these parameters and these regulations on your, on your child, and you aren't doing certain things yourself, um, to, to be a role model for them.

[13:58] Um, and that basically goes into being a good digital citizen. One of the things how you could be a good, how you could manage digital, digital technology and control is, I would say, put away, see if you could put away devices, um, and spend time with your child.

[14:20] Because once they see that you can do it, and that you're spending quality time with them, genuine quality time, not like, let's see how fast I'm going to get this because I need to get back to my device. Um, but spend some quality time and, and show that you can put it away, um, put it on silent, put the tablet down, and spend some good quality time, um, with them.

[14:44] Some other guides is, um, don't share certain stuff. Um, teach your children how not to share certain things, um, such as passports if they are online. Um, these are all potential hazards for those who are thinking ways to bring harm to your children.

[14:59] Um, don't share emergency code words or phrases. For instance, you might have a code word, um, I think a family should have a code word that if something is happening, they could say, um, mommy dares us, and you know that something is happening, but they can't really speak.

[15:15] You know, so if you have certain emergency code words or phrases, have them keep that secret only between you and them so that, you know, if they're being harmed, um, they see something that's happening, um, not to do that.

[15:28] Um, don't share your home address, telephone, or school name. These are all collectively, you may, and isolated, um, they will be able, somebody should be, would be, that would give, put them at great risk, um, because together.

[15:44] There was a particular, um, there was a particular case where, you know that if you travel nowadays, you get, um, you basically either, you have less of a printed ticket now, but what happens is you just go up to the counter now and just scan your, in fact, you can scan it from your device.

[16:04] Well, what happens is, is there are persons right now going around, and that same particular barcode that, that has your travel information on it, if that is discarded or they just happen to scan that, then they take that same information and they produce, they, they take your identity.

[16:22] So if your children are traveling, um, alone and the like, you want to be able, collectively, that information is, is, um, not shared.

[16:33] And then the other thing to enhance and promote digital safety is, when they're online, like anything else, explore together with them. Sit down and see, hey, what is this game like?

[16:45] You know, like my daughters, I always have a competition with them. I think she used to like to play this game called, um, it wasn't Candy Crush, that was my wife's game. Uh, uh, gosh.

[16:57] It's this game where they, Temple Run, there's another one called, um, Subway Surfer. And I would always challenge them, and she'd always want to download codes, and you'd be doing those things.

[17:09] So I'd install the apps on my phone, myself, and either play it with them, or see exactly what gets them, uh, going. So explore together with them, because this creates that community where they will, um, and so that leads to where if you, if you want to talk to your child about technology, try learning what they love.

[17:29] Um, see what is your child's favorite apps. Um, and that all goes through it. Another thing that we don't, I, I wanted to highlight is, um, and, is technology and plagiarism within this digital parental controls, because it's important that we talk to our kids about certain things.

[17:50] And one of the things that, that I faced, and I'm sure that y'all are probably going to face it as, as, you know, is one time my daughter was, had a project to do for school. And she copied everything, and put it on the paper, and you're like, I said, this doesn't sound like how you talk.

[18:06] And, and she was about to hand it in, and it's like, there's no way, you know, you can't do that. And so it's important that you, as a parent, be able to teach your children about technology and plagiarism. Um, because if they are going into any, I'm not sure how the primary school deals with it.

[18:23] Um, the high school, I know it, um, certain high schools, they're very, they will, um, that's an offense. And then more certainly, most certainly so, um, certainly in university, if they go into any post-secondary school, that's, you know, that's definitely a no-no.

[18:38] But we have, we, this is, I wanted to highlight this as well, is that this allows your child to also have creative thinking skills. Um, it teaches them how to be able to put certain things together.

[18:50] And so that's an important part, I think, in this whole digital parent parenting. Um, so teach your, teach your child what plagiarism is about. Understand the term yourself so that you, so that you can appreciate it.

[19:03] But know that plagiarism is something that we should not take lightly. So basically what it is, is that any idea of words that are not another person are not providing credit to that person or service.

[19:14] and that's what, um, plagiarism is really about. And certain resources that you can use as a parent to help, if you don't understand, um, it's, you could use bibliography and explain the consequences of if they don't do that.

[19:34] I think I missed something there. And certain useful resources would be, um, to assist because I know that a lot of times we don't have, um, time ourselves. But we, we basically have to go through the same process with our children as well to say you have to reference when you, because they just sit there and copy and not, and this just goes to show that not everything that's online should be taken as Moses tablet.

[20:01] You know, it's, it's, it's, they have to be able to know what is, what is actual good content to include in their, in their final work that they want to do. So, some good resources that you can use is called on bibme.org, is easybib.com slash guys, or if you just could do an internet search on research and criteria resources.

[20:22] And that should help you as a parent to understand how to, um, how to assist your child in, in producing good material for their school projects and so forth. online etiquette is an important aspect of, of digital parenting I think as well.

[20:41] There are three E's that they sort of promote on the, on saying how to do this. And one is to educate. Education is this process now that we're doing, you're educating yourself, um, empower, empower your child to use the technology and engage.

[20:57] And engage is basically to improve online activity and you can, I think one of the big things that we can do is we can dramatically improve the coordination engaging, sorry, would improve the coordination between parents, educators, schools, and administrators with reference to social media and tech use.

[21:19] Uh, one of the things that, um, I found, and Pastor Morrison mentioned it when we were on the talk show as well and I wanted to highlight here, and even before I mentioned that was a lot of schools, I remember a story where my daughter was in, in the primary school and the teacher set up an email for her, well, for the students, not just for her.

[21:42] And then she came home and she said, I have an email. I'm like, who gave you this email? She said, it was my teacher. I was like, really? And it wasn't, I, I'm proponing that schools should have email systems for the students whereas on there and they could monitor the content if anything happens, everything goes through there.

[22:00] Just like if you're in university, they, universities don't communicate to you outside of their email system platform. If you're in a school and you want to have a, create a platform, encourage your PT or school to do it.

[22:11] But they should all, I found it very, I was very upset that a teacher took it upon herself or themselves to create an email address for my child at that age and for no power and reason without even discussing it with the parent.

[22:28] I thought that was totally outrageous. So I think it has to be, we can improve this by coordinating between the parents, educators in schools and how to use technology and how they want to have technology within the school, within the school program because remember what those children did, technology isn't going to disappear from us.

[22:47] It's, you know, schools are embracing it. Some schools will allow you to bring, you know, they'll either introduce Y4 or they have computers, labs and they're teaching you the entire story there.

[23:00] There's some apps that I want you all to be mindful of that are pretty significant. There are, if you have teens, there are teen dating apps such as Tinder, OkCupid and Grindr.

[23:20] Tinder, they say that they have these things, now bear in mind, I haven't mentioned it yet but what happens is according to North America law is that in most countries they have, and I was trying to, I searched it over here, the only thing that we have on child protection is for parental rights and control in terms of so forth.

[23:42] They don't, there is not a, there is not a Bahamas policy, legal policy I've seen so far where they establish where if you have online content, what is the age that you have to protect the child.

[23:54] North America is 13 plus years, in Asia it's 13, most countries is around 13 plus years. So Tinder is a dating app that links to Facebook and they, if you try to sign up they'll, they have it 12 plus to 13 plus.

[24:10] So, so is OkCupid. If you find them on Grindr, it's a gays and bisexual app. So, it's down at the bottom there, it's sort of off the page but it's G-R-I-D-N-R-D-R.

[24:24] But again, that's not the only thing out there, that's just one of the popular ones there. There's one out of Sweden and so forth. There's Scout.

[24:36] Scout basically allows girls to meet up with each other. So, remember the days where you would organize a group of friends and you say, hey, let's meet to a bowling alley or let's go to ice cream or something like that.

[24:53] Well, now they, this site says it's for that but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to just find that age group in there. You can have an adult pretending to be that particular age because they know how to answer their prompts to be able to sign up and now they're saying, hey, let's meet up.

[25:08] I was going to play on audio where I was, as I was doing some research, my cousin told me she wanted to, she ended up not on one of these apps but she was telling me about her Facebook experience and how they don't look like how they are and she really wanted to meet up with this guy and she got cold feet and, but these things are there and, you know, one of the things is that when you teach your child that things on the internet aren't the way they are because she's saying this guy, you know, you see a lot of times they just, I guess a Facebook thing amongst the young persons is you show, she said this guy had a lot of abs and, and so forth and totally different and then the other thing that happened she, she had mentioned was that she was playing a sport called badminton and she said this, this, this guy was talking to her and she didn't know who this guy was at all and this guy knew almost everything about her and she said, how do you know that information?

[26:15] and she said, well, we, you know, we talk on Facebook or something like that and she said, really, and she said, the way how he looked in person was so totally different, she didn't even know it was this guy but the guy was there playing the sport with her and knew just about everything with her so there's some of the digital dangers on that.

[26:35] The last app there is called, Lulu is for female users, this is something where they just go around and they rate guys so, you know, like the conversation that guy looks cute and everything else so that's an app and there's Tingle which is the final one there.

[26:51] One of the things that's important for dealing with your child is your digital footprint is very important. In our day, all you have to do is go to your school, get your transcript, everything that was recorded on a piece of paper was basically it.

[27:09] You could submit that to your next job, your next employer, you could submit that to the university you're applying and you're applying. It's not that case. I do some work for an offshore bank and the first thing that they do is wealth management and when a new applicant wants to apply to open up a bank account as part of their KYC, the first thing that they do is Google that person to see if they're worthy enough to be able to open up their account.

[27:35] That's part of the process. Digital footprint isn't going to escape us. It's very important that you establish and you train your child how to establish a good digital footprint because that will impact their future employment or their future possibility of either losing a scholarship or being rejected from a university.

[27:56] So that's very important. So review your digital footprint. If they are very active on the internet every couple of months, especially if they're a heavy user, if you do review it, be impartial when reviewing your footprint history.

[28:11] You know, don't say, you know, just try to look at it very objectively like you're an employer. Imagine yourself giving and you're doing the research and somebody's asking for a job and you see certain things such as if your child is always showing up with alcoholic beverage or, you know, they're pretending to smoke weed or something like that, you know, suddenly they want to apply to Barma and Barma looks and says, oh, this person smokes, but they want to stay going in a critical area or they want to break in emergency services.

[28:40] These things will impact and cause your child to possibly lose out on something that they're trying to pursue and make it very difficult. I'm not sure how applying for a U.S. visa they do that technique as well, but I know definitely that's being used in a lot of companies over here in terms of trying to figure out if you are employable or not.

[29:04] can you ask a question?

[29:20] Yeah. How much time do you have to wrap up? A couple minutes, two minutes. Why don't you wrap up and do that? Okay. Okay. You could...

[29:31] Ready? Check your child's cross-post.

[29:43] You know, and this is cross-posting is basically, you know, you see something, they link to something else because that could be something rare showing that they are tendency to wanting the same sex.

[30:02] You know, you could gather, you know, maybe say, who you associate with. That's a big thing. And so that could be an assign to you as a parent, do I need to now even engage in my child even further depending on their cross-post.

[30:16] and just imagine if you're a future employee will end. This is all going to be tracked. Ask yourself these questions and help your child to understand it.

[30:29] Think about the real... Ask them. Think about your real use of social media if you're moving into the social media area. How can it help you is one of the things that you should ask them and where will it fit in your life and how can it help you do better.

[30:45] So just those four basic questions you should engage your child and ask and have a conversation with them when they go. One of the things that... Before I go...

[30:56] One of the things that my daughter, the oldest one, what I had them do was anytime they wanted... They always used to come home from school and always wanted to go on some new website. So one of the things that we had was that they actually had to...

[31:09] Just like going... When a child says I want to go to a party or hang out with some friends, you know, they'd have to say where the party is, who is going to be invited. We did the same thing digital-wise as well.

[31:21] I used to ask them, well, bring me the parental policy, see what it says, read the privacy settings, and anything else. And they had to... They actually had to do like a salesman pitch to say how to...

[31:36] Why they wanted to get on this particular website. And a lot of times I probably might have discouraged them to actually go in on at that point in time. But when they really wanted to, they present and they'll just...

[31:47] They'll hound you and say, Daddy, did you read the parental controls? Did you make a decision yet? And so... I just allow them to be engaged because at some point they too will have to make the decision on their own about going on certain websites.

[32:02] But it will also allow you where, you know, you didn't have to do the legwork yourself and they present that information for you so that you can then evaluate it. Because if you weren't going on the website and looking at it, then at least let them present it to you and see exactly is it worth it for them to go on.

[32:20] If you're part of a school system, all school systems, most school systems would have a learning management system where they call an LMS right now. And one of the things, too, is if the school system is promoting social media, ask the school if they have it linked to a social media platform as well because what that would allow is for greater integration and tighter content control so that if something happens, it can be said.

[32:47] I have another story. I had a friend, his son, he didn't know his son was into a girls' band. And his son was writing a poem to this girl in school.

[33:01] And he decided he was going to post it online. And the parent of the girl didn't take too kindly to it.

[33:14] And so she reported it to the school. The son got suspended for four weeks. I think it was going to be more.

[33:26] Then the father was upset because now he had to take time off from work to go there to deal with the story. So, he wasn't aware of the situation but this all dominoed into some other things.

[33:42] So, it's important that you engage with your child and see how they're dealing with social media because even that innocent post where I'm writing a poem to this girl that I like suddenly escalated.

[33:54] Now, he was trying to figure out he was on track to go to this advanced learning high school like it's a fast track pace school thing and just had the suspension going in his record and the father had to fight tooth and nail to try to get that expunged off.

[34:13] These are the things that are happening nowadays if you don't monitor your child and what they're doing, posting, because that innocent thing could be there. So, see what your school policies are on that.

[34:25] Stay involved in the process is key and discussing with them this process. Discuss with them and say, everything that you're doing is the process of safety.

[34:37] It's no different than when we taught our child how to cross the road, how to do certain basic safety things. Don't play around the stove, fire as hard. I mean, those are physical things, but you now have to expand that into the digital realm.

[34:52] Tips for parents. Be nice. Encourage them. Make it clear that they should treat others with respect. These are the things that you're going to teach them. Think twice.

[35:03] Tell them, think twice before you hit or press the send button. I've had a lot of times where adults always call me and say, I sent an email, can I retract it? And, you know, I say, well, ready to go.

[35:17] And they be like, and we've seen that happen, I think something in Parliament as well, where somebody sent an email and it didn't, you know, went up in the news. But think twice before hitting the send button.

[35:27] You know, read the document twice and so forth. And give them the grandparent rule. If they're going to post something online, let them say, how would your grandparent, if the grandparents are available and live, how would they feel about reading it is a good example of how they could team the content that they're trying to post.

[35:44] You know, be calm before you post it. It's almost like when you don't want to spank the child when you're in an angry mode. You know, you want to settle down and be able to deal with them.

[35:56] Other things that you could do is use privacy settings and do friends, strangers. Seek out and understand your school's social media and tech policies, because they're in school more times than they're at home.

[36:08] You know, my daughter was in class right now at school and, you know, she's getting off late and as they grow up beyond the K pre-primary school, they say it's another story.

[36:21] And wherever possible, take advantage of the programs and events that they have. What is the best solution to control all these devices and so forth? Should we ban social media and confiscate all the devices?

[36:35] Is that the best solution? Okay, exactly. So, we can't hide our things. So, bring some balance in your life. Take a break from your devices. Have dinner or lunch without any devices.

[36:48] You know, exercise. Make other healthy lifestyle choices from the devices. And buying social media, as y'all answered, is not the best solution for you and your family.

[37:00] And I think each family should evaluate where you are in terms of your maturity and how you deal with devices. And don't use the standard fare approach and bury your head in the sand and hope that the digital environment will disappear.

[37:12] It's not. As I said early in the first picture that we showed, some sites will do a better job at protecting privacy and some apps will do a better job at both privacy and safety.

[37:26] You sort of have to play with it. I'm going to give you some devices and so forth. It may not be verbally right now, maybe right afterwards, and through the uploads that's going to be happening, as to some devices that I've seen that can work, but it's not all set in stone because it's a constant challenge to keep pace.

[37:54] So it's almost impossible for parents to stay on top of all of this. I mean, even when I was trying to assemble some of this material here, I was like, how can I cram a lot of this stuff in 20 minutes of two sessions?

[38:06] But there's some practical things. Engage with your child. Speak to them. If you don't understand the technology, you're not using it itself. Like I told one parent, she said, oh, I don't know, my daughter's just go there.

[38:18] I said, well, just stand over the computer and watch what they do for half an hour. If they have to close the screen or they flick it like how some persons went in the job, they're not doing what they're supposed to do. As soon as the person walks, you see the screen flash off and they're doing their work because they have another side up.

[38:34] Just do those practical things and see exactly what is up. I did one thing where I scared my child where they thought that I must be new or everything, but all I did was went into history and they're like, well, why did you go here?

[38:46] But that's something that I did because I always thought, well, you know, we have 90 camps only came out in the 90s or something, right? But I always tried to figure out how did my parents know that we did something we weren't supposed to do, like eat something.

[39:03] My father was a former police, but they used to just come home and just know that you just didn't, something that was not supposed to be rare or you did something. I always tried to figure out how did they do that.

[39:14] We used to be looking all over the house. They must have some cameras in here or something like that. But I think that they just were observing that if they rest, the cookie jar there was like right there, but we as children didn't know, so we would go take it and then never put it out, but they just figured.

[39:31] So there are things that you could do on the practical side to be able to do that. So it's important to keep the lines of communication open up with your child and always be there with your child and work towards what is appropriate in terms of safety, privacy, reputation, and time management.

[39:51] And time management is the key. There are some time I'm going to speak while he loads it up.

[40:23] Time management, if your child is on face, there are privacy controls I'm going to show. This is actual in-depth things on tips and resources for what to go into right now.

[40:39] Instagram, Facebook, every one of those major, first of all, those ones that we use are all typically based out of the U.S., correct?

[40:52] that we predominantly use. So they all follow the U.S. law before they follow Bohemian law. So by law, they have to do things for 13 and under. They have these things for parental controls that you can use.

[41:07] Unfortunately, if a child is on Facebook and they signed up on their own, they won't give you access to the account no matter how you complain unless you get a legal court fight to do it.

[41:18] So that's one of the things where our policy in our house, for instance, was that any site that they were on, the passwords were also in a book for us to go and access. And we just spot check it sometimes and see if we could log in, for instance.

[41:34] So within that, parental controls, if you don't have the device that's doing it centrally within your house, there are some things that you can do within those particular social media sites called time management.

[41:46] Because one of the things, like, you know, the children came off summer break, and it took me a week and a half just to realize that they were back to school because my daughter still had her iPod all night. And then I wondered why she had all these bags underneath her eyes and stuff.

[42:00] Because she still had the iPod still with her. So then I had to now take it away from her and say, hold on, hold on, hold on. I just remember you back to school. And so now we had to set her back in the thing.

[42:11] Then she complained. Then she tried to do this trick. Oh, daddy couldn't do my home rig because I didn't have my airport to check with my friend because there's things on there. So I'm getting rowed now because she doesn't have a home rig ready for the next day.

[42:24] So I said, okay, well, when you come home and I have you home, you're up until 7 o'clock, make sure you get all your stuff that you need because it's going right back in the room. So those are some things that you have to do.

[42:36] And each one of these devices have some time management controls. So you can set time limits that they can use the device from 5 to 7 or 5 to 8. And those are available on Instagram, Facebook, or the other ones.

[42:51] So some tips and resources where you can go to is parentaltools.org, for instance. If you have a problem with content, look at the ESRB. If you have children that play, you know, boys that play a lot of video games and so forth, that should help you.

[43:06] It's a non-profit self-regulating board. for video games. And it will be similar to how you see a movie come out, PG-13, or whatever.

[43:17] Then there's another one called International Age Rating Coalition, IARC. And you can use those to help gauge as to what you want to how you certain things.

[43:32] Parentaltools.org is really, really insightful. people. I spoke about this earlier while this was loading up.

[43:42] Google has a minimum age of 13. Apple has a minimum age of 13. One of the things, anybody have children under age of 13? Yeah? Okay, so if you get them an Apple device, sign them up on the family account.

[43:56] And what Apple has to do, by law, is that once they put in their age, it will recognize that that child is under age and will ask for parent consent. And what you will then do is link your account to that, and you'll then be able to set the parental guidelines.

[44:11] And that will stay in effect as long, so anytime something happens on my daughter's device, I get a notification coming to my email. And so that's how you do it.

[44:22] You link your, you could also do it for Android devices as well. Once your child is under 13, fortunately, because we don't have our laws set for digital stuff for children as yet, we sort of have to piggy back on what they are doing.

[44:35] And that's a good family thing. So if you haven't, or if you get the new device, I think you can erase it if you have already made the mistake and get it linked to that in a particular way.

[44:52] And that's one option. So remember that option is available as long as they are under 13. if you're using Google and YouTube, you could flag, the way how you would use that is you could do inappropriate content, you could flag the video.

[45:17] If it's harassment and bullying, these are basic Google and YouTube policies essentially, and block the user. If it's nudity or sexuality, these are contents that should not be there, but I very much doubt that there's a billion videos being loaded up that it's highly, very difficult for Google to handle that all the time.

[45:40] So you are the parents going to have to look at the history on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and YouTube basically lock, because there's a thing on computers called cookies, which basically they use it to market and you see these ads coming up.

[45:59] You see a lot of ads on YouTube right now, where you'll see a local company over here doing commercials and everything else. They all cookie you up. So you can basically, when you go on YouTube, take your child's device and say, hey, let me use your device.

[46:10] I try and look up this particular product and go to YouTube and see what pops up. And that should help you understand where they're going on that. Harassment and cyber bullying, misleading metadata.

[46:25] There was something rare, copyright and child safety. I don't believe that every site, even a child's site, is safe.

[46:36] I remember before, my daughter used to go on sites, and there used to be some pop-ups and some other content that they would want you to click on that just moves them away, almost like star-track you away, star-tracks the child away from the site into an adult's area of whatever.

[46:56] So you have to pay attention to those things. If they're using Instagram and Facebook, there's some basic things you can do to help. You can ignore.

[47:06] One of the things to do, the four steps, five, sorry, ignore, unfollow, untie, unfriend, and then report if they're on Instagram. Those are some steps how you can protect your child for safety.

[47:22] There's also something in Facebook and Instagram that you can use where you just may seem overwhelmed and that the child has to answer. Even yourself, you could use something called you're all caught up, meaning that you could just come back to the content later.

[47:35] Then, if you want to know if the child's communicating to somebody, you could just go click on above this account and see what that person profile is like, and that should do it. And I spoke about time management tools.

[47:47] They're on the dashboard, so you could basically see if the child is spending more time on Facebook than they should be allowed. Unfortunately, with those services, unlike most other parental sites where a parent has to consent and then there's a parental override or super key, once you're on Facebook and Instagram, it's basically like they treat the child like it's an individual unless it's under 13 but even then, they won't give you access to the thing.

[48:18] They said you should speak to your child about getting the password and so forth. So it's important. That's the reason why you have to keep the lines of communication open up all the time. If you're concerned about, for those who are young, there's something now called YouTube Kids.

[48:36] Just bookmark the site and have them stay on YouTube Kids. There's a site, if you want to do searches that are more for children, especially if they're doing homework.

[48:46] I don't have it here. It's called AskJeeves. Anybody heard of that? Or AJ Kids? Well, they all call it Ask right now. And that, basically, any search you can put in, like, what is the distance from the moon, it'll bring up everything class-related or things kid-related.

[49:01] If you go to, it's called, just go to AskJeeves or AJ.com. It's not there. Content filtering is a key part. There's a software.

[49:13] You could either go software or cloud-based. There's K9 rare protection. It's not owned by Symantec. Symantec was found out a lot of security control. It's still free for home use.

[49:24] And so that you could put that on a computer, Windows, iOS, and so forth to deal content. Amazon has parental controls. So if you have an account and you're the Amazon owner, because Amazon is based on a credit card.

[49:39] Most children don't have a credit card, so then you could just have it linked. You know, if you have a Kindle or a Fire stick on your device, on your TV, use that.

[49:51] There's OpenDNS. And Google has parental controls as well. There's a device, a hardware device.

[50:02] It looks like a little square box, candy box called Meek Circle. If you have, everybody has the, most likely have internet right now on their house with a router. Most routers have content filtering built into it right now.

[50:16] Some of it is very difficult, some of it is not. And it's a hit or miss. But you can add a complementary device to that router called Meek Circle. And it's supposed to be you could do it, you could control the entire thing as an app on your phone.

[50:32] And you could, it works with protecting your whole house from that. As I said earlier, family sharing, it's called family sharing in iOS. Any Apple device activate family sharing.

[50:44] And if you're using Android, an Android tablet, Google, use something called Family Link. Windows also has parental controls. It's not that easy, but it has it.

[50:57] Windows 7, Windows 10. And unfortunately for Windows 10 parental controls, you will have to create a Microsoft account in order to really take the even side to use it. And, but as you saw from that ABC report, children, you know, they'll probably take their friend's phone and tether, do a hotspot, and then bypass the controls.

[51:19] There's an app that you can put on your phone called Teen Safe. And that app does GPS tracking as well. Safe Lagoon is another site. And secure a teen.

[51:30] Also raise your child's text messages so you can monitor everything the child is saying. And then you heard about Net90. Again, it's hit or miss because it's all like every one of these things are trying to catch up as to what the new tricks are and how children bypass it.

[51:44] That's why it's important to keep the lines of communication open with your child. Did I turn it off?

[51:56] I guess that's it. And so it's there, it's a constant challenge, I must say, because even within the commercial business space world where we have to organize security to deal with threats and deal with threats and so forth, we constantly have to monitor what's going on with it.

[52:27] So you have a parent, likewise, would have the same responsibility if you want to maintain the content and control of all the devices there. But it's going to be a constant thing.

[52:40] But I think what to do is don't get frightened and overwhelmed. Enjoy your children because they'll grow up in no time. Like my daughters, you know, when I tell parents, my daughters in university now, it's like, they can't believe it.

[52:54] And so when they used to jump up on me as long as possible and I could have taken them on a ride bicycle, that was good. But, you know, it's an ongoing thing.

[53:05] But cherish the moment. Don't be blind to the technology. Don't be afraid of it. But I would just say, engage your child. Look at the devices. See what's so good.

[53:16] Talk to them. Just like how we, in the day, when the parents say, oh, you are listening to that junk and we wanted to listen to that music and they wanted to hear that music. Likewise, the children are going through the same process.

[53:27] There's music that's fitting their music pattern and style and everything else. Listen to it. And, you know, because, and then when I hear certain music being played, for instance, and my daughter would listen to it, I'd say, oh, that's not really that good, you know, why would you listen to that?

[53:45] You know, but I don't just say, oh, just turn it off or I just put on my own music, which is from my era, but I try to listen to it. And there are multiple ways. A parent gave me a story where when they were growing up, they used to say, for instance, when they used to watch the Cosby show when it was good, the mom, the mom used to ask them, what was the theme of the story, explain what it is.

[54:07] So they used to have that engagement process. So each family would find its own technique, how you can engage and roll with your child. But it's important to keep the communication lines open.

[54:20] So you could find threats that are coming in like a storm coming in, you know, whether it's suicidal notes, whether they have a tendency to want to be same-sex attracted, are they asking questions about sexuality, are they getting misinformed, you know, are they going to experiment, are they going to be hooking up and meeting somebody through whatever other means, like that.

[54:45] And I hope that information was sort of helpful. Sorry I had to skip through a lot of things or not touch in depth on any particular one, but it's to try to gather the most independent, open thing that I could hopefully share with you, with everybody.

[55:08] Any questions? Thank you. My question is, you talked about, I think you said Gmail. You can go back in the history, and so Gmail records all of the emails that you've sent.

[55:23] And we know generally that what you put out on the Internet, you can't get back. but my question is, for sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, let's say I discover that my child has put some inappropriate content, words or pictures or whatever, and I tell my child, okay, go and erase that.

[55:44] Does Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram keep that history? So will it indeed never go away? Never. No. And what will happen typically is that it will make it very, if you don't really know how to get access to it, it won't be easily accessible that way, but it's still there.

[56:07] I am not sure if that answered the question. Yeah. So if somebody really wants so they could dig and get that information, it's the... It may not pop up immediately when somebody does a search on their particular page, but what you're saying is if somebody really wants to dig, they'll find it.

[56:24] Yeah, because there's something called on the internet, what they call caching, and caching is where all the data that... The reason why things stand the proper fast where you are at is because everything is not...

[56:35] Everything is cached, and what caching does, it puts information closer to where you are, and that's held on somebody's server when they have this multitude of global service elsewhere. So when you delete, it then has to delete on a server in Miami, it has to delete a server in New York, because it wants that information, somebody that's in Hong Kong, to be delivered faster and not wait to traverse across the earth.

[56:59] And so within the context of caching, that information is there somehow on somebody's server, and then there are persons who live to harvest that type of cache.

[57:13] Now, it may mean that after they delete it and I'm looking for it and I don't see it, I probably move on to the next thing. But if somebody really is investigating it, it probably, this possibility will pop up.

[57:27] Okay. So it's, you know, it will be there. Can you find it?

[57:38] Okay. there's this thing, there's this, I'm going to try and see if I can explain it the simplest way.

[57:56] There's this thing called a Google Internet cache, and so within the search you could do an advanced search, and it says search cache. It's the same thing when you see these news organizations pull up and they say, oh, you posted it.

[58:11] For instance, this lady on MSNBC, she's a host, and they said she posted these comments some time ago before she became a host of MSNBC, and somebody pulled that cache up, and then she claimed that she was hacked, and, you know.

[58:29] So you have persons, as you can see from the political war that's going on, there are persons that are just sitting there that just harvests this information, and data, and the storage of data is so cheap, that's the reason why you don't even pay attention to Google or you put all your stuff on iTunes, or they say it's almost like unlimited, because, I mean, technology that's holding most of your information is smaller than this, and they just have in these servers just collect that information, just collect it, and there's no need for these companies and servers to remove that information.

[59:05] You don't have to hit that panic button any day as before, because the storage capacity is there, and this is where data science and this data mining, as I mentioned earlier, that's what the college professional and these guys are all doing, how to mine this data, so it's there.

[59:25] Now, you and I who were just sitting there may not be able to harvest that, but there are tools there that just goes and just mines this information and pulls it up, and then with the right incentive, they will then publish that information, so it will be there.

[59:44] But there's something where you could do it, just go into advanced search under Google or use another search engine like dogpile.com or webcrawler or something like that, and use their advanced search.

[59:55] search. Before Google, everybody says Google and Google brings up the searches very quickly, but there are a ton of other tools, search engines are there, really.

[60:05] I mean, you could use, sorry? Yahoo, yeah, you could use, oh gosh, the name is eluding me right now.

[60:21] It was, it used to bring up, it wasn't very graphical when the text came up, so it didn't, it became popular like Google, you could see pictures and everybody wants to clink, it just puts text there and so forth, but I can't, if I remember the name, I'll say it again, but you have other search engines like dogpile.com, like if I want to bypass Google and I'm looking really for something, I'll go to dogpile.com and I say, do the search in dogpile fetch everybody else and they'll give me all these other searches that you probably have to go to the 20th page in Google to find it, but now I'm trying to do some deep searches to bypass all of the Google stuff because it's all based on metadata.

[61:05] Metadata is just a particular way of saying, I want my site to bubble up because, you know, once you're in the first five pages on Google, most persons tend to click within that. You don't tend to go beyond the first five thing, you know.

[61:18] So everybody's trying to compete to get the first five pages. Now if you want to bypass that, like if you, you know, looking for something, that's the reason why I was teaching about plagiarism and so forth earlier.

[61:30] And so it just allows you to understand how to use Google and search engines so that you could produce reports, you know, and get them used to going to school. But critical thinking as to what's coming back because not everything that's popping up is interesting.

[61:48] And then over here what I find is that they are populating at the bottom of everything all these other stuff. If you look at the bottom of your web pages now you see things, you be like, it's all unrelated to what you're interested in, but they'll take you, you know, to Timbuktu.

[62:08] Because they're doing geographical tagging now. Go ahead. I don't necessarily have a question, but you mentioned YouTube kids.

[62:21] Yeah. Even with that we need to be careful because there are some sick individuals out there. They are using the popular cartoon characters like bubble guppies and Peppa Pig and stuff like that.

[62:33] And they're creating videos, but it has profanity and sexual content. But your child would see the icons and just click it. And you think you put them in YouTube kids so they should be fine, but if you're not watching it with them or skimming through it to make sure it's safe, they'd be listening to these things and you wouldn't even know.

[62:51] So that's just a tip for them. That is correct. That's absolutely correct. And that's the reason why I say it's really engaging your child and making sure that it's there.

[63:04] But you have to digital content will always bypass, especially because YouTube kids is like Google doing it and making it itself. This is like the greatest environment.

[63:17] We can have other people do it. And that now becomes at the discretion of the other people. So, yeah, but it helps. I mean, it's helping a little bit with the whole thing there with accessing content.

[63:34] Yeah, quick question for you. I know we talked a lot about untagging, blocking, and navigating technology.

[63:46] And you also talked about cyberbullying. But what about parents, or how can parents kind of have those conversations with their kids about the groups of people that their kids connect with?

[63:59] Because we have a lot of tagging in the digital space where kids can take a picture of a child and post that on their page and have commenting and stuff going on in their circles.

[64:12] Stuff like Snapchat and status and stuff. We see these new features coming in WhatsApp and what's not. But how can parents kind of, or should parents even, speak to their friends of their kids about posting pictures of their child?

[64:27] Or what type of conversations should parents have about those? That's a good question. Unfortunately, you won't be able to control the content, and it is a conversation that you'll have to have.

[64:41] I could speak to, I remember one time my oldest daughter took a picture of my youngest daughter and posted it, and we almost went ballistic on it. You're like, you could post stuff on yourself, but don't, you know, you weren't given authorization rights to post on your sister.

[64:55] And so you have to then have that conversation so they know now it's the policy. Because even now, like, my daughter's in track, and they have a policy form where we then ask about, they ask about, can they upload content with a photo on it?

[65:17] And at least within that document that they have given us, we have the opportunity to opt out. And we have opted out of them taking because I'm not sure what they're going to do with that digital content, how secure they're going to have that information.

[65:29] So our preference is not to have, we control her digital, because remember, before we talked about the digital footprint, and something's going to be left behind, and so that's critical.

[65:41] But it's no different than when you probably kept your child at home, and they suddenly, you now take them to daycare, and they suddenly bring them some habits that ruin their at home, and now you have to, like, sort of wean that and discuss that.

[65:54] Unfortunately, I can't think of a tool right now that you can lock it in, but it's first talking to your child, I think, is important to understand what is your policy in terms of what they're going to do with digital photos, if you've given them the tools to do that.

[66:13] And then second, observe what they're posting or what's coming through on their line, and then if you know the parent of who's associated with it, see if you could then have a discussion with that parent before you have a discussion with their child, and saying, hey, do you know your child is doing this?

[66:29] Because I've seen it rare that has really caused some rift between parents, you know, that were probably friendly before, and now they are not unfriendly.

[66:43] It's almost like that commercial where the old ladies were posting the thing on the wallboard and saying, I'm going to unfriend you. You could create some shathoms there.

[66:57] I can't think of a tool where you could control it, but I think it's do some of the basic things that we talked about. Engage your child, be with the devices, install some of the apps on there, see if you can get participated in the group as well, and make sure express exactly what your expectations are.

[67:21] You know, it's no different than when I'm telling my daughter, I said, if you're going in with a guy, make sure it's well understood that it's clear that this is where you stand, you know, because a lot of times we make mistakes, even in marriages where you go with an assumption that this person wants to say, I'm committed to you only, then don't get upset if you never had that conversation beforehand.

[67:48] Say that this is, you know, part of the dating process that we committed and this is the sole thing because, you know, everybody has their own way of interpreting what they want.

[68:00] So I think it's a family discussion that you should have with your child first because there aren't any tools and then expand it further to the other parent and allow them to share that share that story because I've had parents come to me and ask and I've had to go back and do digging for them, you know, and sometimes for companies as well where it now became a legal issue and it could go down different roads that you would hope that it wouldn't, but I would say keep the lines open.

[68:36] I'm not sure, that's the best thing, but I can't think of any technology where you could put a stop to it entirely. Hi, not really a question, just a comment for everybody.

[68:51] And we have three teenage children, so imagine what we're dealing with now, right? So it's impossible, and we're dealing with this now with one of our children, it's impossible to control everything on the internet.

[69:05] Impossible. Technology doesn't allow it. But what you can control is what you teach them. And go back to the old-fashioned principles. Teach them what is right and what is wrong.

[69:18] Like the comment I was having with my son, you need to learn to listen to that voice. You know when it's right or wrong. Listen to that. And when you talk about the lines of communication, keep the lines of communication open.

[69:32] And because regardless of whether it's Snapchat or YouTube or whatever, if they begin to learn to listen to that voice, the right and wrong, then they will know what to do.

[69:43] Because it's going to be impossible for us to control the technology. So teach them the, go back to the basic. Know what is right and wrong. So if you come up with something that is wrong, you listen to that voice, then you know how to navigate.

[69:56] Because you will be up the rest of your life, 24 hours a day, trying to control what is coming at them. Because the minute something comes up, there's some other way around it.

[70:10] So teach them that basic principle of right and wrong and head in that direction. That's just my advice. Yeah, that's very good advice. Three teenagers.

[70:23] Alright, thank you very much. Alright, thank you everybody. Thanks, Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, y'all.