Improving My Internet To Improve My Life

There are several important concepts to introduce your children to prior to giving them free reign on the internet. Security, skepticism and responsibility are critical qualities for even a casual internet user, all of which can help in innumerable ways. By demonstrating the importance of responsible, cautious and careful use of the internet and its resources, you'll give your children some of the tools they'll need to avoid common pitfalls found online.

Not Everything is What it Seems Online

A healthy dose of skepticism will go a long way to helping your kids avoid hoaxes, satirical content, and blatant lies on the internet. Where once there were chain letters and mock articles, the internet is now a sea of falsehoods and half-truths that the unwary user can end up getting lost in. A savvy reader can spot the incongruities in some articles, but for those that struggle there are a wealth of resources that reliably debunk certain claims by various content providers.

Just as there are false claims made by websites, there are also unscrupulous people online who will go to great lengths to get personal information for a host of different reasons. Educating a child on the importance of data security, especially where personal and private data is concerned, can help prevent misunderstandings and potential malicious activity. It can also go a long way toward helping them judge a person by their actions rather than just who they say they are and what they claim to be.

The Internet is Forever

Sites crash, servers go offline, and hosting services become defunct, but by and large it's best to adopt the expectation that anything posted online will be there forever. This includes, but is not limited to, blogs, status updates, short messages and photos. This fact has come back to haunt many unsuspecting novices, from college freshmen to celebrities.

Worse still, anything shared via social media can potentially circumnavigate the planet in a few hours with little effort. All it takes is the right content and some motivated people, and an innocent self-portrait can become a great deal less flattering. There's nothing wrong with sharing photos of a trip or of yourself, but care should be taken to avoid compromising images or unflattering angles that could be creatively altered to look like more than they are.

The internet is home to a wealth of information, knowledge and useful resources that shouldn't be eschewed simply to maintain privacy. However, it also shouldn't be approached without a complete understanding of just what kinds of traps exist, and how to avoid them.