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VirginMedia
Virgin Media Staff
Virgin Media Staff

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44% of six-year-olds are going online in their bedrooms.*

It's a digital world, and children are being encouraged to online at a young age, whether it's to access or submit homework, enjoy apps based on their favourite characters, or to video chat with relatives. And video games, too.

And that's why working with our partners at Internet Matters, we’d like to introduce you to Digital Resilience – methods and tips to help children prepare for any issues they may face on line, and how to learn and recover from them.

Here's our top tips for supporting and encouraging Digital Resilience in 6-10 year olds:

Be involved in what they do online

Ask them what they are up to online, and join in. This will make you more comfortable that they know what to click and who to ignore as they get older.

Encourage them to be a good digital citizen

Discuss kindness and being a good friend, on and offline. Let them know to talk to you or another adult if they are concerned about anything they've seen or been told online.

Set screen time limits

Games can be very adddictive, very quickly. Setting time limits also sets expectations, and encourages a good balance of on and off line time.

Use parental controls to create a safer space for kids to explore

You can use a child-friendly search page to help your kids to look up information, and restrict access to certain apps, sites or functionality. For example - allow access to play a video game, but the game can't be played online without your password.

Set digital boundaries

At this age, children can't self-regulate: firm boundaries such as site controls and time limits may seem unpopular, but if it's not appropriate to be online, then with these tools, you'll be in control

Find out More

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There’s some incredibly useful content over on the Internet Matters website that you can explore if you’d like more advice on building your child’s digital resilience.

We’ll be featuring more content each day - click this link to view part 1: Helping kids stay safe online  and you can always talk all things security in our Switched On Families forum

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*Source:Internet Matters OL research 2016