The online world is where the children of our world live, they communicate, play and learn all in the digital world. Almost everything is in the digital world, seriously even colouring in is done on an iPad or Tablet in schools. I don’t know what is wrong with an old-fashioned pencil and paper.
I would have to say I am a pretty restrictive parent when it comes to online activity and allowing my kids to play games on an iPad or tablet. Considering what I do for a living, I am very anti-tech with my kids. Not because I think technology is bad or anything like that, but because I feel that my kids should learn to interact and live in the real world first before they dive into the digital world.
I also know what lies beneath the edges of the internet, what hidden dangers await them at every turn, on every app or game they play. The types of people that are waiting to manipulate and extort them at any opportunity. I don’t like to be negative but I have seen too much in this space to not be cautious about what activity my kids do.
Some parents allow their children to play games, surf the web and just do whatever they like from a very young age. You see toddlers playing online games on iPads or phones with no supervision or controls. You might say what could a toddler do to get themselves into trouble? Maybe not much, they will not deliberately do anything that could get them in trouble, they wouldn’t understand much about the online world except what they see but if a malicious actor added a link in a chat window, they wouldn’t know they shouldn’t click on it or even have the thought it would be a danger to them.
A situation like this could still be very damaging and potentially a steep learning curve for the parent. Toddlers though would not be the age group I would have the most concern though, I am thinking between the ages of 6-12 years old. During these years children are starting school and interacting with digital spaces more and more as the years pass by. During the first year of school, they will start to play games, they will get homework via emails and online apps. The older they get the more this will happen.
The concern for me is they are not being taught to be cautious, they are not being taught to consider things are not what they seem, and people are not always who they say they are. Children need to be taught about online danger the same as almost every parent in the world tells their children not to talk to strangers in the real world, this same principle needs to cross over to the digital world. We need sun-safe style campaigns that have worked wonders in Australia created but for a digital world.
Many parents are completely naive to the threats, they have no idea of the dangers that are waiting in the depths. That’s why Caity Randall and I created our book The Shadow World. It’s a cyber security awareness book written for kids between the ages of 8-12 (could be useful for older readers as well or slightly younger if being read with a trusted adult). It uses the concept of shadows and knowledge torches to help the kids reading the book to learn more about the risks and the idea that this knowledge can help light the way through these shadows.
It discusses some serious topics like online grooming, bullying, online gaming, viruses and so much more in 19 chapters. It creates a mindset that it’s okay to make mistakes, its okay to ask for help and not to be ashamed or hide things from the people they trust in the real world. We have even included questions for adults to ask the kids after each chapter, to get conversations flowing between these kids and adults.
We include a thesaurus with any jargon that has been used that will make perfect sense to the kids but may sound like a foreign language to the adults interacting with them. We have created the resource that all parents need in this digital world, a resource for schools around the world to create programs of education around, for libraries to put out on display to help encourage a generational education change, a deeper understanding of the online world and the risk it truly has to us in our daily lives.
By educating this next generation we can all help to push back the avalanche of threats and help create great behaviours before kids grow up and head out to work. Creating true awareness, not an afterthought when it is too late.
That’s not all though. I have been working hard to get this book into as many hands as we can and have already secured a sponsor who will be donating 5,000 copies of this book to primary schools in Australia after its release. Yes, that’s right five thousand copies will be donated to schools for free. Imagine this, 5k kids across 50 schools all getting this book for free, they take it home and learn with their parents and maybe even with their teachers in school before they take the book home. This helps educate the kids, the teachers and the parents. Maybe even some of their siblings as well.
We don’t want to stop there though, we will be growing this number, really pushing hard to get more books out into the hands of kids for free, and help as many kids as we can to become that little bit more educated online. We will continue to push until every child between the ages of 8-12 has a copy of this book available to them. I don’t know how yet but we will make this happen.
If you like the idea and you want to do something like we have done in Australia in your country, find some sponsors and donate as many books as you can to schools, reach out to me, I would love to find a way to get you as many copies as I can at the lowest possible price, I can get you. This isn’t about money; this is about education and truly making a difference. If I make nothing from this book but get it into the hands of every child, it will be a success in my eyes.
Let’s change the world together, one child at a time.
