GRAND RAPIDS — Let's face it, your children do a lot on tablets and computers at school and at home. There are some things you can do at home to make sure your child is protected and security settings are up to date.
You know that dust covered device sitting in your living room? That's your router. Digital Safety Expert Chris McKenna with Protect Young Eyes says you should be paying attention to it.
"The router is the most important device in every single home. It's often the thing that nobody ever really thinks about because it's so confusing. It's behind the couch, you just hope it works," said McKenna.
There are four things to pay attention to on that device: Frequency Channels, Speed, Security, and Wireless Standards. For wireless standards, your router should have WiFi-6 or high frquency WiFi, for security look for WPA2.
"There are definitely things that you can do to have a router that has certain controls that would automatically enforce Restricted Mode on YouTube," said McKenna. There are devices like "Circle" and "Bark Home" you can plug into your router and control screen time, content, and more.
McKenna continued, "especially for younger kids, where the risk isn't so much that they're intentionally looking for inappropriate things, but that while doing homework, they accidentally stumble upon inappropriate things."
Digital safety can and should start at home, but devices apps, and the internet don't go away when school starts in the morning.
"Schools inherit what happened digitally all night long every morning. And then parents inherit a device at 3:00 the next day that maybe they don't understand. And I want there to be greater communication and clarity around who owns kids' safety during these 24 hours, so that the kids are protected," said McKenna.
He continued, "I would invite parents to ask is a question of school IT leadership to say, who is monitoring this school issue device when it's not at school? That's the number one question."
If your child uses apps like Tik Tok and Instagram, you need to check their settings. McKenna said, "number one, let's make sure they have a private account, if that's something that you can do make it a private account, so that fewer people can discover your kiddos in the first place, the next thing would be to make their birth date accurate."
The digital world isn't all bad, these days, social media is a big way students feel connected and accepted.
"I want to encourage students to be courageous to step up and to speak up when they see those breadcrumbs that could lead to something horrible, because there were plenty of digital indicators of what took place, horribly over at Oxford High School," said McKenna.
