Safety Online: How to get the most out of Social Kids

We’re constantly worried about what our kids are getting up to online, but what are we actually doing about it? Or do we know what to do? Social Kids has an internet course for age 7-11 of five videos, worksheets and parent guides to help you set up protection for your child as they venture out in the online world.

This company approached me when the course was still in the developmental stages a few months ago and I wrote about it at that time here. It’s now all completed and ready for you to get your kid internet savvy.

Nicky and I have now gone through the course and I thought I’d share a few ways in which I think you could use this course to its greatest advantage.

Watch the videos together

Sit and and watch the videos together. There are five videos and they are about 17 mins average each (one is 27 mins) and let them be a starting point for any conversations that your child wants to have.

These are the five themes:

1. Being Smart online
2. Kung Fu fighting (Bullies)
3. Truth or Dare (Fake news and the Algorhythm)
4. I speak digital (Minding your manners and understanding the symbols)
5. Global surfer (Quiz)

I found one area that I felt we needed to chat more about was the bullies. Although Nicky hasn’t really had any experience of online bullies, the information presented was useful, like keeping records and taking screenshots.

I also felt I needed to add to it and went through some ideas found here about how to deal with your day to day insults. (Read: The power of the opposite compliment)

We actually did some role plays practicing what he would say if insulted.

I thought it was also necessary to discuss what he could deal with by himself and when to actually call an adult.

Nicky seems to know the basics (like not to give out his private information) but it’s also important to me that he’s ready to handle any bad guys online.

Help them do the worksheets

The worksheets are pretty simple. You could either print them out and fill them in on paper or you could do them online. On your computer you could open them up in Adobe and draw the answers on and then save them as a document. On a tablet you could also do that and save it in your google drive to access it later. The worksheets are then uploaded so that they earn their badges.

The badges also promote a sense of pride that they can deal with the online world and name their capabilities. One thing that came out in the parent guides is knowing your self worth and I think as humans if we do value ourselves we won’t fall prey to the bad elements in our lives

Use the parent guides to set up the tech and safety

Each section also has a parent guide. These are really well researched and beautifully laid out. This is going to be really useful for you to:

• set up your boundaries on screen time
• set permissions on what you can post of them
• use certain search engines, anti-virus protectors and privacy settings
• a timeline of when you can let them do what social media at what age

Nicky and I have already been having this conversation about how I have to ask permission before I post a picture of him.

Because he is on the older scale of this program, being 11, it’s not suitable for us to use YouTube kids as most of the the videos he watches (on chess, at the moment) aren’t available there. But it’s still important to me to be able to keep popping in and seeing what he’s watching.

One thing I think we are getting right (as an alternative to screens) is the board games – my kid is obsessed with chess!

Want to know more? Go ahead and visit their website here.

You can also watch my video review here:

Visit Social kids on their website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Social Kids

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