Fareedah Shaheed, founder of Sekuva and the Safe Kids Movement. Photo courtesy of Fareedah Shaheed.
I gave my son a smartphone when he was 14 years old. He felt like a phoneless freak thanks to peer pressure from his friends who already had their own devices, but I have no regrets waiting until he was a teen.
I was concerned about how images and words on a five and a half-inch digital screen might affect my son’s cognitive development. I also worried about my son posting images and personal information on Facebook, Instagram and other social media apps, which could live on the internet forever and be used to exploit him by any frenemies, online predators and other entities.
According to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey of 4,623 U.S. adults, 72 percent of parents with children in grades K-12 said their kids spent more time on screens compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak.
In a 2020 research report about kids’ experiences and attitudes about self-generated sexual content, Thorn and the Benenson Strategy Group found “9-12 year olds were more likely to admit that they had shared their own nudes and they had seen the non-consensual reshared nudes of others. They were also more likely to think sharing nudes is normal among kids their age (than in 2019).” The survey included responses from 1,002 kids ages 9 to 17 throughout the United States.
With more children using the internet and apps for school and play during this pandemic, how do we protect our kids from people who want to exploit them using their personal information and photos?
Fareedah Shaheed believes in using a holistic approach to educate children about online safety. The cybersecurity expert is founder of Sekuva, her business that helps parents keep their kids safe online. She also created the Safe Kids Movement for (mostly) moms who want to protect their school-aged kids from online hackers and predators on gaming websites, social media, YouTube and other sites. The Safe Kids Movement provides parents with pre-recorded training videos with experts who discuss online security. It also features customized guidance from Shaheed and a private Facebook community for US$27 a month or a one time payment of US$324.
“So oftentimes when we're talking to kids and we want them to change their behavior; something that seems normal to them, but is widely inappropriate to us….we wanna meet them where they are,” says Shaheed, who advocates using empathy and joy to educate kids about online dangers.
“So oftentimes as adults or as parents, when we talk to them, we talk to them about our fears versus their fears. So we will say things that do not relate to what they want. So let's say that we don't want them to talk to strangers because we think strangers are bad and they're terrible. To them, strangers are maybe a new best friend. Maybe they're connecting. Maybe that's a sense of community. So you have to give them things that actually matter to them. So maybe you would tell them that if you're sharing this type of photo, it can go around and the entire school could have it. Just because you're sending it to one person does not mean that that one person's the one that's going to have it.
“That allows them to see, oh my God, this is something that I don't want, not just what my parents don't want. So put it in a way that packages the fear and the dangers and something that makes sense to them and not just from an adult perspective. You might say a predator might go after you, but they're thinking, why would a predator go after me, that's crazy. So you wanna meet them on what are their fears and what are their goals in life and give them realistic things that could happen if they were to do X, Y, and Z, and then give them alternatives to doing the things that they want to do. So that's the main thing…”
If parents want to discuss the dangers of the internet with their daughters or sons, Shaheed recommends a dialogue that can sound like:
“Hey, I know TikTok is really, really fun. I just saw these couple of funny videos.”
“Just make sure that if you are commenting on someone's TikTok, that your profile is private.”
“The reason why we send it as private is…because you don't want other people finding your location or stalking you at school. Or sometimes people will take your private profile and all of your details and make those things public.”
“So you wanna be sure that whatever you're posting, whether it's in your private profile or your public profile is things that is not going to tie back to the family so that you don't have other people exposing you online because then you're gonna feel very unsafe when you're going to school or going to college or you're at here at home. So we just wanna make sure that you're as safe as possible and that you're enjoying the platform the way that it needs to be enjoyed.”
When Should You Give Your Kid a Mobile Device?
“That's a difficult question to answer because yes, we have research backing to say the longer you wait, the better,” explains Shaheed, who was included in Forbes 2021 List of 30 Under 30 People in Enterprise Technology. “However, I know that there are families that don't have that privilege of waiting; that they really need to have a smartphone because they need to keep track of their kids. They need to communicate with them. Their kid goes to school 30, 40 minute away…
“So everyone's in a different situation. If you can wait, obviously the best thing is to wait until they absolutely need it for whatever safety reasons or they're about to leave the house. Or they're about to do volunteer work (or) after school activities. So if you can wait, that's the best thing. But if you can't, then make sure that you're giving them something that does not have so much access. And you're consistently talking about safety and security.
“And the main thing isn't actually just about what's in their devices, because no matter how much monitoring you do or controls you do, they're going to find a way around things. And even if they don't find a way around their actual devices, they actually go to their friends, family members, classmates, and they see things on their phone. So my main thing before I even get into technology is how you create a safe space within a household so that you have open communication between you and your child.”
How Can You Protect Your Kid's Privacy?
With the recent revelation that Life360, an app that tracks the location of children and other family members, is selling its user data to third party data brokers, what can parents do to ensure their kids’ data is protected?
“I always tell parents that if you're using an app and it's watching your kids, then someone else is watching your kids too. So either that's the company and they can sell it to someone else who can watch your kids’ movements and then sell and advertise and do other things based off of that. Or it could be a hacker or a predator, which has happened before, where they will get into your account to monitor your kids as you're monitoring them. Or they'll get into the actual company and then they'll see millions of kids being monitored. So anytime it's a company, most likely there's other things going on,” Shaheed says.
“I always say that if you wanna track your kids or you wanna do things like that, make sure you're using things that are native, not third party. So you can use iPhone's actual features. You can use Android's actual features. It’s best not to download another app when it’s something very sensitive, like your kids' location or their messages. I recommend not doing that.
“However, sometimes it's needed for certain things like social media, even though certain social media is very difficult to monitor like Snapchat. But there's certain apps that allow you to monitor your kids. You really wanna make sure that it's a legitimate app. People talk about it. It's been in the news. It's been reviewed by millions of parents. You're okay with it. And then you can scroll by the privacy policy if you want; you don't have to read the whole thing. You can just see, how is data used? Usually when you scroll down, it's like big, bold. Like, how do we sell data? How do we use the data? How do we store it? You can just skim that and see are they selling it? Is there an option for me to turn that off? Honestly, it can be simple. It's very overwhelming, but you can make it as simple as possible.”
More Advice about Gaming and General Websites and Social Media
Check the settings, Shaheed recommends. “That's the most overlooked part of the gaming websites. Most gaming websites, especially when they're geared toward kids or they have a really majority kid audience, they always have parental controls. However, is it as robust as parents like it to be, sometimes not.”
“However, there are certain things, like Nintendo Switch (which) is definitely geared toward kids,” says Shaheed, an online gaming enthusiast. “So they have a plethora of parental controls that you can use, especially for kids at a younger age. If you have Xbox or PS4, they have a plethora of parental controls as well. So always look at the settings, check the official websites for PS4, Xbox, those types of things. And they will give you detailed step by step instructions on how to turn on parental controls to make it very easy for you. So that's the first thing I would say with gaming.
And then the second thing is what I said before with the holistic safety. That's literally for everything--the whole online world. But in terms of what you turn on, check the settings for security, privacy and parental controls.”
Listen to “The Accidental Arab,” Fareedah Shaheed’s podcast to learn why she started Sekuva and the Safe Kids Movement. You can also follow Shaheed on Twitter at @CyberFareedah or visit cyberfareedah.com for more details about the Safe Kids Movement.
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