“Don’t give your child a smartphone.”
–Tim Fries

I know it is more than weird to quote oneself, but I cannot say that enough.

At this morning’s Parent Coffee, I joined Daniel Kilback and Paul Ericksen from our ICT team to talk with parents about the critical importance of actively supporting their children to be safe online. We also spent a bit of time helping parents set parental controls on their children’s devices. To be certain, helping our children to be safe online is no easy task, however, it is one of the most important responsibilities of being a parent and/or an educator in today’s world. While computers, tablets, and phones have many benefits, they also present many challenges (dangers is more accurate), especially to young people. 

As a school, we have shared similar information in the past.  You may be thinking, “oh, this topic again.” But as technology rapidly changes, the topic rapidly changes as well. The tech related issues young people face today are substantially different than they were just last summer. 

I am not going in depth on this topic here, because I am hopeful that you will use this time to use the resources below to begin the process of setting or updating the Parental Controls on your child’s device(s). In the coming months and years, AAS will further emphasize our support of students being safe online. You will hear more about that from the School and from your children. 

In the meantime, please take the very important step of ensuring that you have Parental Controls set. 
If you need help with this, or if you have any questions about how to help young people be safe online, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to work with you to keep our kids safe.

Daniel Kilback (dkilback@aas-sofia.org)
Paul Ericksen (pericksen@aas-sofia.org) 
Tim Fries (tfries@aas-sofia.org) 

"The best thing parents can do to protect their children is to unplug and interact face-to-face."
–Sherry Turkle

Resources:

• Digital Parenting One Pager
• Online safety: Teenagers (raisingchildren.net.au) 
• Supporting Children of Different Ages With Their Use of Technology (nspcc.org.uk)
• Commonsensemedia.org
• The Smartphone Kids Are Not All Right