Protection is …
Protection online is similar to mechanisms that we know from the physical world. Think of the traffic for instance. Stop signs, traffic lights, or routes that you advise your kid to avoid, all serve one purpose: making the environment safe for children and guiding them in how to navigate through it. Also in the online environment, there are many things you can do and teach your child to safely navigate through digital spaces. Even if it currently still means that you need to install some of the digital trafic lights yourself.
Protection can help …
Protection can help not just your child but also yourself to navigate through the online environment. It helps you to set equal standards for both, the physical and online world. Through this, parenting becomes consistent and this consistency makes it easier for children to understand that protection principles are something natural in all our surroundings. May it be on the way to school or in an online game with friends.
Protection can look like this:
Using certain settings and tools. Access to personal data is restricted by strong passwords and the use of multiple-factor authentication. Personalization mechanisms in systems can be controlled in settings that, for instance, save location, clicks on ads, or visited websites. You can delete or edit your previous online history, for instance the commands you gave to your smart speaker.
But protection can also take the form of awareness. Knowing what type of data are personal or even sensitive (name, adres, etc.) and thinking carefully about when and where to share these data in online systems is also an important form of protection.
More resources:
Smart speaker safety guide for parents | Internet Matters
Children's Rights in Digital Safety and Design | Sonia Livingstone, OBE, FBA - Children and Screens