It’s never too early to teach your children about online safety and identity theft. With three children aged from the range of 6-14, these topics have been discussed many times. It is important that we teach our children as soon as we can important safety measures to keep their own identity safe from predators. Below are my tips for discussing these topics with your children at different ages.
Preschool
Our children are accessing the internet earlier and earlier and even preschoolers can get online on their own. For this reason, I highly recommend software targeted for this age group that allows heavy parental controls. Software such as Fooz Kids where parents decide what websites their children can access. I think identity theft at this age is a little above their heads but teaching them to be safe online is definitely important.
Elementary
Once our kids enter school our ability to monitor what they do becomes a little tougher. For this reason, I think it is important to teach our children why not sharing their information with people they don’t know is important. Start to explain to them a little bit about identity theft. Search the internet for child identity theft tips to help.
Tweens
By the time our children are in the double digits the influence of friends is powerful. Hopefully, the talks and safety tips you have previously installed are foremost in their mind. For the online safety of my children, I monitor all social media websites they partake in. If I see something I’m not happy with I sit them down and explain why something is inappropriate or not the best decision. Show them identity theft facts found online to drive home the point of how important it is to keep their identity safe.
Teens
Teens need to know less about online safety, at this point, it should be a given, and more about the dangers of identity theft and how it can harm them in many ways, especially their financial future. As they begin to embark on their own lives outside of school, maybe college, or a job good credit and financial stability are important and must be kept safe.
One way to help both you and your children is to enroll in programs such as Identity Guard. Protection against identity theft is important at any age and better to start our kids off right as they build their own lives.
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