December 9, 2021
How child safety expert and CEO of The Safety Place, Crystal Pichon, plans to keep her kids and yours safer this winter
Talk About It
Communication will always be key.
Technology use is an important life skill that we all have to master to be successful, productive members of society. Our youth will only continue to use it more not only for socializing and fun, but for grade school, applying for jobs, college, scholarships, and propelling them into adulthood and their careers.
Technology and all of its abilities are great, we just have to make sure we as adults are in the best position to advocate for our kids, and also tech them to be safe and use technology responsibly.
Kids who feel supported, loved and comfortable are less likely to be manipulated or unsafe online. As they grow and change, find new ways to connect, develop trust and a strong comfort level when it comes to talking about what's happening online.
Take time to recognize the positive uses of technology. Don't just talk about the dangers and negatives...focus on the good, too. Ask them to share how they want to be seen online. How will they use technology to do good.
Know Your Security
Detail
A lot of us don’t take time to even know what protection is already available to us. I have Panoramic Wifi with Cox and Advanced Security is included and takes less than a minute to set up.
Cox Advanced Security works with Panoramic Wifi to deliver our customers a smarter, more personalized security solution for customers home network.
With Advanced Security, device monitoring is automatically extended to any device connected to the home network wirelessly: phones, laptop, game consoles, cameras, etc.
Advanced Security uses Advanced Intelligence and machine learning to monitor and analyze wifi traffic and will automatically block suspicious activity in real time.
You can get a daily report. Customers can review a list of digital security related actions that are taken each day right from the dashboard. That’s important if you are daily shopping.
Your network is scanned for threats 24/7, and you’ll receive an alert if any suspicious activity or danger is detected on your device.
Use Technology to Disconnect
It’s colder out and kids are inside way more and technology is always there. But try to find other activities to draw your kids away from their devices. A lot of parents worry about screen time, and that is totally understandable.
We need to remember that the same technology that helps us connect to each other also has features that help us disconnect, especially for some holiday family time. And that is so important, especially for kids.
The Panoramic Wifi app lets you turn on parental controls and block unsafe sites.
The app also allows you to pause devices for dinner time, family time, when their friends are over or bedtime, for example.
Location, Location, Location
Keep devices with screens in a common area. If you keep the screens around everyone else, you’re much less likely to have an incident.
Turn off camera location settings. Your camera defaults to save your location every time you take a photo. So, all those photos posted on social media could be telling web users where you are.
Advise family members not to tag their location on their social media posts. This sometimes lets web users know that you are not at home, providing information needed to plan break-ins.
