Why online safety matters for teenagers

Teenagers use digital technology for everyday activities like viewing and creating content, keeping in touch with friends on social media, relaxing, learning and doing schoolwork. They also go online to get support for their physical and emotional health and wellbeing. They might experiment online with ways of expressing themselves too.

Because they’re online so much without your supervision, teenagers need to be able to identify acceptable and unacceptable online content independently. They also need to know how to behave respectfully online and how to recognise and navigate online risks.

Online safety risks for teenagers

There are 4 main kinds of online risks for teenagers.

Content risks
These risks include seeing material that’s upsetting, disgusting or otherwise uncomfortable. This material might include:

• pornography or sexually explicit content in music videos, movies or online games and websites
• real or simulated violence
• hateful information like racist images and texts
• terrorist information
• deepfakes, misinformation and fake news
• harmful user-generated content like sites about drug use, self-harm, suicide or negative body image.

Contact risks
These risks include adults posing as children online, strangers who persuade teenagers to send them photos or videos of themselves or meet them in real life, and online scammers.

Conduct risks
Conduct risks include behaving in inappropriate, hurtful or disrespectful ways or being the victim of this kind of behaviour. Examples include:

• cyberbullying
• sexting
• misusing people’s passwords and impersonating people online
• making unauthorised purchases using other people’s financial details
• creating content that reveals information about other people
• having trouble regulating online time, which can develop into problem internet use.

Contract risks
Contract risks include signing up to unfair contracts, subscriptions or terms and conditions that teenagers aren’t aware of or don’t fully understand. As a result, teenagers might:

• be open to identity theft or fraud
• get inappropriate marketing messages or scam emails
• have their personal data collected from apps and devices.

Helping teenagers with online safety

Your child is probably independent online, but you can still help them to be aware of and understand online safety risks.

Good ways to do this include:

• being a role model
• talking with your child about online experiences and content
• showing your child how to handle privacy
• talking about safe online shopping.

Being a role model for online safety

Role-modelling is a powerful and positive way to guide your child’s online behaviour.

You can be a positive role model by using social media and digital technology in the way you want your child to use it. For example:

• Ask your child for consent before posting a photo of your child online.
• Aim to balance screen use with other social and recreational options.
• Put your phone away when talking face to face with others and during meals.

Talking about online experiences and content

Talking openly about your own social media use and online experiences and encouraging your child to do the same is important. It helps your child feel they can talk to you if they have a bad online experience.

It’s also good for your child to share positive online experiences. You can get your child talking by asking them to explain the apps, games and content they’re interested in. You might say, ‘Snapchat posts disappear quickly, but a screenshot can capture what’s been said. Is that right?’ Or ‘Talk me through the differences between YouTube and TikTok’.

It’s good to encourage your child to develop a sense of what they like and don’t like online and to explain their choices to friends. For example, you could say, ‘It’s great that you chose not to get involved in that online argument’.

Talking about trends, online hoaxes and misinformation will help your child to develop the ability to tell whether an app, post or website has good-quality information.

You and your child can find out how to recognise, avoid and report scams on Scamwatch. You can also use ABC News Verify or AAP FactCheck to check the accuracy of claims by politicians, public figures, advocacy groups and institutions.

Showing teenagers how to take care with online privacy

You can help your child look at and choose appropriate privacy, location and safety settings on devices, apps and social media, and you can also talk about why this is important. For example, you might say, ‘Employers often do online searches to find out about job applicants. Make sure that anything you make public is OK for future employers to see’.

It’s also important for your child to be careful about sharing personal information. Remind your child not to give out their name, address or other identifying information to people they don’t know in person. Your child also shouldn’t send images or videos of themselves to people they don’t know.

It’s important for your child to know about the risks of using public wi-fi to access their accounts. You can explain that even though the wi-fi might be at a location that they trust, like a library, the wi-fi is public and therefore can easily be hacked.

As your child gets older, online dating might come up. Key safety issues include your child sending sexts or nude photos of themselves to someone. These could be forwarded or used without your child’s consent. Your child should also be very careful about meeting up with people from dating apps.

You might find that your child knows more than you do about privacy settings and data collection on YouTube, streaming services, gaming platforms and fitness devices. You can make the most of this by asking your child to share what they know and then working together to adjust the settings on all your devices, services and apps.

Talking about safe online shopping

If your child is starting to shop online, it’s important for them to use reputable shopping sites, check customer reviews are real, and look into transaction and security software. Never pay if the site takes only alternative currency like gift cards or cryptocurrency.

You could talk with your child about shopping online, and explain the risks associated with online transactions. For example, you might say, ‘Have you done an online search and checked the online ratings to make sure it’s a reputable site? You can also message or email the company before making a purchase. I can help you do that’.

Practical precautions to protect teenagers from online safety risks

It’s important to help your child learn about online safety, but it’s also important to take practical precautions that help your child recognise and navigate internet risks.

Here are things you can do:

• Negotiate a family media plan with your child. Your plan could cover things like screen-free areas in your house and appropriate online behaviour.
• Stay in touch with what your child is doing online and how much time they’re spending online. This will help you to spot when your child might be having problems.
• Encourage and remind your child to explore and use the internet safely. For example, it’s OK to remind your child to check privacy settings.
• Find out how to make complaints about offensive or illegal online content.
• Avoid using filters or other online safety tools. If your child is using filters, they might not develop the skills they need to avoid inappropriate content. They might take risks either accidentally or on purpose when they go online in unfiltered environments.