Become A Filter For Your Kids In Today’s Information Age
Terrorist attacks, end of world predictions, abductions, kidnaps and suicides. All of these can become really disturbing news for adults and much more for kids. In today’s 24/7 fed news age, it has become nearly impossible to protect kids from this constant bombardment of distressing current events.
Every time they are connected to this digital world and can receive news from everywhere. They find access to current matters through TV, news websites, blogs, social networking sites, feeds and alerts. If looked closely, much of this content comes from sources that are originally designed with keeping adults in mind. Whatever they see, hear or read may not be appropriate for a child’s age. Especially when children have an overexposure to digital communicating devices such as mobile phones and tablet PCs, many children get information directly to them. Quite often young children have their parents or teachers to help them and make sense of such horrendous situations. However, this is becoming more difficult in today’s world.
The basic line is that young children simply do not have the ability to understand the news events and the context of those web pages. It is also much less known of the credibility of the news sources. Even older teens face difficulty separating between what is real news and what is opinion.
No matter how old a child is, hostile or upsetting news reports can affect their sentiments. Many young members of the school going community may experience fright, concern, unease or remorse that can leave a long lasting impression even after the news event is over. Below are some tips to assist you with helping them deal with such situations:
- Strengthen their feeling of safety: Reassure your children that they are safe. Explain to them that whatever is worrying them is far away from their reach. If it has happened closer to home, explain that you and your community have neutralized the threats for them.
- Discuss the news at their level: Before jumping to conclusions or scolding them without a strong reason, ask them what they know. Most of the time what they really know is totally inaccurate. If you have younger children, try not to over explain. Just stick to the just-enough-information model to clarify and calm down their fears. Encourage them to share their views, which in return would help them to open up and think critically about the news.
- Find age-appropriate news sources: Many online portals like Nick News and Scholastic News for kids contain news and articles. This would stop your kids from getting exposed to adult-orientated news and feed them age appropriate content.
- Monitor website surfing: If your kids are addicted to their mobile phones and devices, you should be up to date with the newest technology. The same technology offers a safer way to keep tabs on websites visited by your children on their mobile phones. Mobile monitoring software such as PhoneSheriff helps you achieve this by providing complete logs of web pages visited on the device on regular intervals of time.
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