
What’s your favorite game to play right now?

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Kids regularly interact with their real-life friends online, so it doesn’t seem quite as weird when a new person might start playing a game with them or likes a photo that they share. It’s increasingly normal to make friends online, so avoid framing conversations regarding people they don’t know in real life as being strangers. Instead, focus on red flags and behaviors that may indicate that someone has bad intentions. Start early to begin fine tuning their radar to understand what to look out for. Consider starting with parental controls.
Online grooming can happen quickly or over time, but at its core it’s a process of exploiting trust to shift expectations of what safe behavior is and leveraging fear and shame to keep a child silent. Start by learning the red flags and identify inflection points to weave them into conversations. Leverage offline safety concepts like recognizing the difference between safe and “tricky” people and explain how it’s even easier for people online to pretend to be someone they aren’t.
Start a dialogue about what online interactions should and shouldn’t look like, how to cut off contact, and where to get help when they need it. Build upon earlier skills ensuring they have an understanding of what online grooming is, and as their relationships become more private, make sure they know it’s never their fault if someone tricks them, threatens or betrays them.
What’s your favorite game to play right now?
As kids get older, they will begin to build stronger communities online, which may consist of a mix of people they know offline, friends they’ve made online, and people they don’t know at all.
Keep the dialogue going to build their skills to recognize risky interactions so they can safely interact with others as their device independence grows. Build skills by talking through scenarios like “what would you do if an online friend asked where you lived?” so they can practice recognizing red flags and when to get help.
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