It needs to be a combination of factors. You talk to children about what is and isn’t appropriate, and hopefully give them the right guidance to make the right decisions. But let’s be honest here, there are plenty of adults who don’t have a clue when it comes to internet safety so expecting children to know about it is naive at best.
Just look at the amount of people even on MN who wil set up online donations for what are essentially usernames on a screen with no idea who and what these people are. Or who react with incredulity that someone would make up a story about an abusive relationship/dead child/illness within the family because “I never realised someone would do that.” It’s only a short leap from there to pretending to be a teenager in order to make friends with other teenagers with the idea of who knows what sinister nature.
Also, checking a child’s phone is equivalent to saying that they shouldn’t be posting anything they wouldn’t want someone to read, but you being the one to read it and therefore being able to know that they’re safe rather than it be some ne’er-do-well online.
As for bullying, again, you only need to look to mn to see that that goes on in the adult world and plenty of adults are not equipped to deal with it. A teacher at DS’ school once said to me that bullying wouldn’t be nearly so much of an issue were it not for social media.
My ds is sixteen and I haven’t looked at his phone in a long time. Neither did I ever demand for it to be handed over for spot checks, however the understanding was very much that I had access to it, and if I wanted to I could check it. And we had that conversation in conjunction with the one about staying safe.
Prime example. when he was eleven he asked me if he could have instagram and I said no. He then went ahead and set up an instagram account anyway because all his friends had it. What then transpired was that he was subjected to some low level bullying on there. But because he’d already asked and had set up the account without me knowing, he didn’t feel he could tell me about the bullying because he already knew I didn’t want him to have the account. It took a couple of instances of his being anxious about going to school before it all finally came out.
My ex’s DSD however also has instagram with their agreement and she is eleven. Public account, and some of the stuff she puts on there is horrendous. Forwarding meme’s full of the c word etc with very little understanding of what they actually mean. Equally there were some instances where an individual from the school set up an account and was sending bullying pm’s to others. Also an eleven year old who’s parents clearly weren’t on the ball with knowing what he was doing.
talking to them isn’t always enough.