Tips for Parents and Guardians on Using Cellphones Safely
Cellphone Safely can be fairly straightforward to grasp but difficult to enforce.
Monitor your children’s wireless use just as you do their online computer use.
Keep the lines of communication open with your children so they will be more likely to tell you if they have concerns about someone contacting them or information they have received.
Here Are A Few Cellphone Safely Tips:
- Set appropriate ground rules for your children’s use of wireless devices.
- Monitor your wireless bill to keep track of the amount of time your children spend talking and sending messages and with whom.
- Teach your children to tell you if anyone sends them a threatening or frightening message.
- Remind your children text messages may be intercepted or used by others.
- Teach them to use appropriate language in their messages while being sure not to reveal personal or identifying information.
- Know your children’s passwords.
- Consider creating settings to control or prohibit access to the Internet, e-mail, and text messaging through your children’s wireless device.
- Remember a global-positioning system (GPS) option, if offered by your service provider, could be used to help locate your children if lost.
Tips for Parents and Guardians
- Never share your wireless number and personal or identifying information with anyone you don’t know well and trust and without my permission.
- Never use your wireless device to take, send, or post pictures or video of your friends without permission from their parents or guardians. Taking or sharing embarrassing pictures of someone is a form of bullying and harassment. Once you post an image or video online you can’t get it back.
- Keep your passwords private.
- Never give photos of yourself to anyone you don’t know well and trust and without my permission.
- Never respond to threatening or frightening voice messages, text messages, or photos.
- Use of wireless technology doesn’t guarantee privacy and before responding think, “Is my reply hurtful or rude?”
READ MORE source: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Visit http://www.netsmartz411.org/ to learn more about better protecting children when online.
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