Cyberethics has to play an important role in keeping our children safe and sound around this new technology-driven space. It’s necessary that kids understand these digital ethics to flourish without tripping. Our electronic devices offer many appealing and entertaining features, but beneath all that treasured anonymity, there are a few dangerous threats lurking around. It’s not uncommon to come across headlines that are engraved with keywords like cyberbullying, sexting, hacking etc.
Our children needs to learn cyberethics, but why?
It’s pertinent that kids understand their role towards the betterment of our society. And it’s a great challenge for parents as they have to inculcate these ethics into their kids, subtly. There are not just a few, but a myriad of ethical issues that have surfaced in the recent few years. We need to make sure that our kids tackle all these new challenges effectively.
Cyberbullying is on the rise, and the rates have tripled over a couple of years. And to put it another way, 87 percent of all the online users have experienced cyberbullying in one way or another.
Cyberbullies, now have different anonymous ways to contact people, like fake profiles on social media and dating apps. This makes it almost impossible for anyone to trace the original source of bullying within the right time.
But what kids need to learn the most is that whatever they will post online, it’s never going to go down ever due to the prevalence of screenshots and instant-sharing. So if your kid ever posts something inappropriate, it’s going to be extremely difficult for you to delete it, entirely.
It’s more than just cyberbullying
But digital bullying is just the tip of the humongous iceberg that lies underneath. With what we have around us—digital devices and social media, there are a lot of questionable choices and opportunities that lurk around us. It’s relatively easy to categorically understand the right and wrong in the real world, than for the digital world. People are still learning the standards of digital ethics.
Some professional help
We have gathered some professional help from the Family Online Safety Institute, and we hope it will give parents some headstart with what’s considered unethical on the internet and why their kids needs to stay away from all of this.
- Downloading pirated content over the internet.
- Copying music or movies illegally.
- Posing others’ intellectual property, ideas, artworks and photos as your own.
- Bullying others online.
- Sharing others’ news, images, screenshots and even ideas or plans without their permission.
Teaching kids cyberethics
To ensure that our kids learn all the necessary online ethics, we need to follow these 6 steps.
- Start young. Don’t wait for the “right” time. Start teaching your kids digital manners as soon as they get their hands on an internet-ready device.
- Words hurt. Your kids needs to understand that if they want others to be nice to them, they need to do the same.
- Inculcate empathy at an early age. Seeks ways to encourage your kids to be more compassionate towards others.
- Be the example. It’s very convenient for kids to simply do what’s done in front of them by their parents. And if you are copying or downloading pirated stuff, you can expect them to do the same. It starts with you, and if you don’t find it wrong, your kids won’t either!
- Tell them how to cite. Your kids can avoid numerous problems by the simple rule of citation. Tell your kids how they can credit others’ intellectual property and why they need to do that.
- Setup a technology contract. We have discussed a smartphone contract before, but this time, we would want you to create a contract that covers every kind of technology and the consequences for breaching the rules laid down in it.
Comments are closed.