How children have safe summer vacations online
Talk together about online experiences
The summer vacations are a good time to let children and young people tell you what they like to do online, which websites they visit, which games they prefer and much more. In this way, parents gain an insight into their children's online use and show that they are interested in it.
If children and young people know that their parents or other adult caregivers are interested in what they do online, they are more likely to turn to them for advice or if they have problems.
Become an expert yourself!
In order to provide children and young people with advice and support, it is important to be familiar with the basic mechanisms and dynamics of the Internet yourself. So the vacation season can also be an opportunity for parents to find out what's currently hot and to try out various offers themselves. You will quickly notice that many safety tips can be applied universally to different services. For example, when it comes to protecting yourself from unwanted contacts. In this way, educators can gain self-confidence and also appear credible to children and young people.
The klicksafe parents' area can serve as a starting point, for example.
Do a data protection check as a family
Especially during the vacation season, children and young people increasingly use digital communication services to stay in touch with their friends. It's an ideal time to consider together which data privacy settings you should make.
For example, you can use the family checklist "How to protect your data better". The flyer "Data protection - tips for parents" is also available from klicksafe to go with it.
Talk about sharing vacation photos
Especially during the vacation season, children and young people might like to show where they are and what they are doing by photo or video. Have a conversation about which photos can be shared with whom without hesitation and where caution is advised. It is important that children and teens develop a sense that they should not share private details with strangers and that they must also respect the privacy of others. For example, they should never use pictures showing other people without being asked.
As parents, you should also be a role model here and always involve your children before sharing photos of them.
Create a media use agreement
At www.mediennutzungsvertrag.de, families can easily make agreements for media use. Consciously addressing questions like "What services are allowed to be used?" or "How long are we allowed to watch YouTube?" is a great way to reflect on media use in the family.
The media use contract offers prefabricated agreements that can be adopted, but it can also be designed individually with your own rules.
Further information