Keeping Our Kids Safe Online: One Mom’s Perspective

Keeping our kids safe online can feel like a part-time job—not just any job, but a frustrating, messy, fear-inducing one. You want your kids to have a positive experience in the digital realm, but just when you think you have it all figured out, the digital landscape (or your child’s interest in it) changes.

In the documentary Childhood 2.0, digital safety expert Chris McKenna, founder of Protect Young Eyes, says, “The guardrails necessary to keep [the tech] industry accountable have been set aside in the spirit of innovation.” In the same whistle-blowing film, he calls out a shocking statistic that one-fourth of the World Wide Web is pornographic. This is not to mention all the other ways too much screen time, even morally neutral content, can negatively impact our kids.

What Chris’s words mean is that no one is going to do this work for you. The world is not looking to protect your kids. If you want to help your children steer clear of the dangers of the internet, it will need to start with you.

But as we face the giant that is Big Tech, the question remains: Can we confidently stay ahead of the constant shifts and intentionally raise a family to know and love Jesus in the digital age? 

The answer is yes. But in order to thrive in our God-given role of parenting children through the digital age with virtue and intention, there are three crucial mindset shifts every parent needs to adopt:

• Your presence is the biggest tool in the toolbox
• Your family’s screen time is part of (not separate from) your discipleship plan, and finally
• What are you waiting for? Go ahead and set up those filtering apps and parental controls

Your Presence is the Biggest Safeguard

One of the greatest challenges of raising kids in the digital age is that their childhood looks vastly different than the one we grew up in. As an eight-year-old, I remember watching DJ and Stephanie Tanner hug it out after a sibling tiff, week after week, circled around our family room TV. When my sister and I were in high school, my parents sat on the family room couch with us while we watched Party of Five, a show covering various taboo teenage topics. 

By contrast, kids today often consume their entertainment choices more independently. They may choose to watch solo on a tablet, from the comfort of their bedroom, in the dark, with earbuds in, any show, and any time of the day. We’ve metaphorically placed the world in our children’s laps. 

So, which scenario would you prefer your child to consume technology? In the family room surrounded by their most trusted comrades in life? Or the latter, in isolation?

The choice is clear. But to keep our kids safe online, we must go against the grain of our fast-paced society. It requires rethinking our daily and weekly schedules so we can slow down and stop seeing our child’s screen time as the babysitter but as the time when parent and child can connect in crucial, value-forming ways.

Influence Through Screen Time Discipleship

We didn’t know it at the time, but when my parents sat down with my sister and me to watch a show about orphaned teenagers navigating risky behaviors, they were essentially discipling their two teenage daughters using screen time. They used what culture gave them and turned it into a moment of influence, asking us what we thought about important topics on which we were still forming our moral standards and beliefs. 

Does this mean that every time our child sits down to the tube, we should hover over them? No, but every time we make a family activity out of our entertainment choices, we increase the connections we make with our children.

If you want your family values to speak louder than those they learn from the screen, actively engage in their screen time. Make it an activity you do together.

A Fresh Example

If you’ve been out and about lately, you’d be oblivious not to notice all the pink and green everywhere. Glinda and Elphaba of the film Wicked seem to have sprinkled their dust on every store shelf. The world is celebrating this grand Broadway storyline come to life on the big screen.

But just the name of the movie has some parents wincing. Wicked? A movie about witches?

While there is much to talk about in the antihero trend of Hollywood, both positive and negative, what stands out to me the most is a beautiful scene that reminds me of Jesus.

As Elphaba’s differentness comes under the spotlight on the dance floor, Glinda reaches out and touches her green face. The crowd’s reaction to Elphaba’s presence in the ballroom was not unlike the crowds who shunned the leprous. And like Jesus, Glinda corrected their judgments with a kind touch. Though Galinda’s motives are compromised throughout the movie, I know someone who did what Glinda did but with the truest love in his eyes.

It’s a heartfelt scene, and we can talk to our children about why these secular stories tug at our hearts: they remind us of Jesus. 

Ultimately, we need wisdom to decide which stories possess redeeming qualities that far outweigh the bad. Sometimes, the conversation you offer your children is what makes the difference. 

Your presence in conversation and discipleship are the foundation of your safety plan for your kid’s online experiences and entertainment choices. With these relational parenting philosophies in place, let’s talk about specific technologies that can help you additionally safeguard your child from unhealthy or inappropriate screen time exposure.

Filtering Apps: Importance and Limitations

Online safety risks generally fall into one of three categories:

1. Inappropriate and/or adult-rated content
2. Unwarranted interactions with strangers
3. Undesirable interactions with people your kids know (like bullying peers)

Leaders often invite me to speak to their moms’ groups about filtering apps and monitoring tools: which ones to install or steer clear of, and how to get the most out of them. I get it—navigating the tools designed to help keep our kids safe online can be confusing and overwhelming. Plus, it’s an important piece of the puzzle.

But I often respond to these group leaders, letting them know I won’t be centering my digital parenting conversation on this one thing. Too often, we treat these apps as if we can just wipe our hands and go home as soon as we get them installed. Job’s done, right?

Wrong. First, technology is changing on the daily, and the filtering apps to keep your kids safe, unfortunately, are moving at a much slower pace to keep up with that technology.

In my own household, we’ve tried three different filtering apps for our router, and all three were disappointing. One was too tricky to set up. Another one slowed down my work computer so much that I had to remove it. And the third one downright failed the test of blocking out unwanted content. 

I hesitate to start the conversation with filtering apps and monitoring tools as the primary means of keeping your kids safe online because they’re not meant to be; you are. Mentoring your children to develop their own internal filter and moral compass is primary. Filtering apps are supplemental, not the other way around. 

Online Safety Tools

That said, here are three areas you should be exploring to further safeguard your home (and your child’s eyes and ears) from the threat of adverse online experiences:

1. Install a highly reviewed filter for your home’s internet router, (could you guys create a page where you review some?)

2. Set up parental controls that come native to each device your child uses, and

3. Explore which parental control options you need for individual apps and streaming services. 

Keep in mind the safety app or monitoring tool that’s right for one family may not be the right one for another family. Needs vary based on a child’s age, level of independence, and the kinds of technologies they have access to.

For example, as my oldest child is about to learn the responsibility and privilege of driving a car, the parental controls native to my child’s smartphone may no longer be sufficient. My husband and I are considering adding Life360 into the mix, an app that can track how fast my child is driving. That’s a feature this former teenage rebel turned mom can appreciate.

So, while filtering apps often lead to false security (they’re not 100% reliable), I am confident that in my own home, they have weeded out many discouraging situations before they happened. Since our kids can’t unsee what they’re exposed to, prevention is a worthy goal. 

Left unchecked, your child’s online experiences can threaten their physical safety and their social and emotional well-being. But with some intentionality, you can become equipped to make educated decisions around the various online opportunities that beg for our kids’ attention.