What is digital citizenship?

Digital citizenship is when you use the internet in a legal, safe, respectful and responsible way.

Digital citizenship means behaving:

• lawfully – for example, not hacking, stealing or damaging other people’s work, identity or property online
• safely – for example, protecting your personal and private information online
• respectfully – for example, thinking about how your online activities affect yourself, other people and the wider online community
• responsibly – for example, learning skills for making informed choices when you’re online.

Benefits of digital citizenship for pre-teens and teenagers

Pre-teens and teenagers get many benefits from being digital citizens.

Some of these benefits come from collaborating, communicating and connecting with others. For example, games like Minecraft allow pre-teens to be creative and collaborate with others to build new worlds. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Messenger, Twitch, Snapchat and Discord help teenagers maintain friendships, share experiences and support peers.

Self-expression is another benefit. For example, by being digital citizens, pre-teens and teenagers can explore who they are and take action on issues they care about. They might do this by engaging in social causes like climate change, joining or creating online communities, sharing or posting comments, images and videos, and creating content like videos or memes.

Sometimes the anonymity of the internet can be a bonus – for example, if pre-teens and teenagers want to explore aspects of their identity or get help with issues they’re worried or embarrassed about.

Finally, the internet gives pre-teens and teenagers access to news and information, and many go online to understand themselves and the world.

Key messages about digital citizenship for pre-teens and teenagers

These key messages can encourage your child to be safe and responsible online, while still having fun:

• Be lawful – know and follow the rules online.
• Be safe – protect your privacy.
• Be respectful – expect respect and be ethical.
• Be responsible – learn and use digital literacy skills.

Be lawful: know and follow the rules online

The online world has rules and regulations to help people have safe and positive online experiences.

You could talk with your child about how to behave lawfully – for example, by respecting intellectual property, copyright and trademark protocols.

Your child also needs to know that some activities are unlawful. These include hacking, piracy, and using inaccurate or fake information to create online accounts.

Children have rights to information, freedom and privacy online. These rights are protected by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. You can read more about children’s digital rights at In our own words – Children’s rights in the digital world.

Be safe: protect your privacy

There are several ways your child can protect their personal and private information:

• Share only as much personal information as necessary. For example, it’s not compulsory to enter your year of birth, mobile number, email address or city on all online forms.
• Keep privacy settings up to date on social media sites, so profiles aren’t publicly available.
• Keep passwords private.
• Check the location settings and services on smartphones, tablets and apps. Turn off the location services your child doesn’t need.
• Read the terms and conditions of apps to understand what data the apps collect and how they distribute that data.
• Don’t use public wi-fi for posting on social media or messaging, because the connection is public and can be hacked.

If your child posts personal photos, videos and other content, this can become part of your child’s permanent online reputation. It can also be altered or shared without your child’s consent. You can encourage your child to make good choices by getting them to think about the online content their future self might be comfortable with.

Be respectful: expect respect and be ethical

Respect for yourself and other people is important in all relationships, and it’s no different when your child is online.

You can encourage your child to treat online friends with as much respect as face-to-face friends. This involves things like:

• speaking respectfully in online games
• getting consent when taking photos or posting content about other people
• not creating or forwarding nasty or humiliating emails, images or text messages about others
• refusing to take part in mean or negative online discussions about other people.

It’s good to encourage your child to talk with you if they’re worried about something online – for example, if they see someone being bullied or attacked online. It might help your child to know that things are easier to sort out when other people help.

And if your child gets any nasty or bullying comments, they should block or unfriend people who don’t treat them with respect.

It’s often hard to ‘read’ emotion in written comments, posts and emails, and jokes can easily be misinterpreted. You can encourage your child to ‘stop, think, review’ before they send a message or post an online comment. Using emojis or hashtags can help, but these might have more than one meaning.

Be responsible: learn and use digital literacy skills

Digital literacy is the skills you need to use digital technology. These skills include knowing how to:

• find and evaluate online information
• create and share information
• communicate with others online
• stay safe online.

Digital literacy is an important part of digital citizenship, because it helps your child make safe, informed choices about their online activities and behaviour. For example, with digital literacy, your child can:

• identify scams and scammers – you could encourage your child to use Scamwatch
• recognise deepfakes, misinformation and disinformation – you and your child could discuss the accuracy and reliability of online information and images
• check the accuracy of claims by politicians, public figures, advocacy groups and institutions – you could encourage your child to use ABC News Verify or AAP FactCheck.
• avoid clickbait and pop-ups that might lead to porn sites or scams – you could help your child learn not to click or show them how to click away.

Regular, relaxed and respectful conversations with your child are the best way to help your child make good decisions about online behaviour. You could talk about using social media responsibly, cyberbullying, sexting and avoiding online pornography.