Setting boundaries around online gaming
SAFE ONLINE GAMING FOR SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN
How can you make sure your child plays safely online?
Read our parents' guide to safe gaming for primary-school children for expert tips to help you manage the risks.
Many of us despair at how much time our kids spend on screens. But for the 81% of children who play games online, there are bigger risks than going square-eyed â and itâs up to us to help them manage these risks.
Children can get deeply immersed in online gaming, but they havenât always got the life experience to assess whatâs safe and appropriate.
Schools and parents both have a responsibility to upskill children to handle risky situations while gaming.
What are the risks of online gaming?
There are many risks that children may encounter while gaming.
Some of these include:
- Playing age-inappropriate games
- Privacy and sharing personal details
- Interacting with others, including cyber-bullying and grooming
Of course, online gaming also has many benefits, including:
- developing logic and critical thinking skills
- learning to communicate with others
- improving working memory, concentration and multi-tasking.
But helping our children understand how to stay safe while gaming is vital now and for their future.
Risk: age-inappropriate games
Despite the fact that the media loves to equate violent gaming with violent behaviour, no direct link has been found, according to Internet Matters.
Nevertheless, there are risks involved with children playing age-inappropriate games, from encountering violent, profane or sexual content to interacting with much older gamers.
Parents often feel under pressure to let their children play games that are not suitable for their age, and it can be very difficult to say no.
Offline games for PCs and consoles have Pan European Games Information (PEGI) age ratings that provide guidance about the suitability of games, but age ratings are hard to apply to online gaming platforms, as much depends on who children are interacting with and how they play the game.
If your child wants to play a game and youâre unsure of its suitability, you can look it up on askaboutgames.com.
âThis doesnât just tell you whether a game is appropriate based on your childâs age, but it also talks about the type of content, so you can assess whether itâs suitable.
If youâre unsure whether to give a game the green light, spend some time playing it with your child.
This gives you the opportunity to see what itâs actually like, to teach your child how to use functions like privacy settings, and, if you decide itâs not age-appropriate, to explain why youâve made that decision.
As children get older, peer pressure steps up, and before you know it, your nine-year-old is claiming that âeveryone elseâ is playing the 18+ rated GTA V.
Bear in mind that children do exaggerate: itâs not uncommon for them to say theyâve played a game when actually, theyâve just watched clips on YouTube.
Ultimately, though, you have the right to put your foot down, even if it makes you unpopular with your child. Parents sometimes feel they have to back down, but itâs part of your role to know what your child is playing and have the final say about whether itâs appropriate,
Risk: privacy and personal details
Many children are naturally trusting, and while itâs lovely to see their innocence, it can lead them into trouble online. One way in which this can happen is by sharing private and personal details with others.
This can be a difficult area to negotiate. Kids might know that they shouldnât share their details with others, but are unsure where to set the boundary.
They may feel safe giving information to a friend, for example, without thinking about what that friend might do with it â intentionally or unintentionally. We often hear kids saying theyâve âbeen hackedâ, for example, when actually they gave their password to a friend, they fell out, and their friend then shared it on.
Itâs also important to teach your child about what information can and canât be shared, and with whom. Children often canât tell the difference between whoâs a good person and whoâs a bad person, but they need to recognise that stranger danger exists online, and that they are simply not allowed to share personal information. This is covered in school each year and reiterated on Safer Online Day.
A vital task for any parent is to familiarise yourself with the privacy, safety and parental control settings of your childâs games, and use them.
But donât just set rules: be present and get involved with your childâs gaming, let them talk about what theyâre doing online, and use those teachable moments to talk about why privacy is important and how to protect it.
Risk: interacting with others
Whereas in the past, children sat together in front of a console, they now game remotely, interacting online with people they know â and people they donât.
This can be a real worry for parents: Itâs natural to worry about inappropriate language or topics of conversation, cyber-bullying and even grooming.
Creating a culture of openness where your child can talk to you about who theyâre gaming with.
We need to have conversations regularly, and encourage children not to be secretive. Chat to your child about who their online friends are, why itâs important to be cautious, and that not everything people say is real.
As well as helping your child think critically about who theyâre interacting with, educate yourself about the apps theyâre using. Many games, for example, have the facility to only add people that your child knows to chats, whereas some popular apps that gamers use to communicate are unrestricted and can host very adult conversations.
There are also certain practical steps you can take to oversee and control who your child interacts with while gaming:
- Insist that your child asks you before adding anyone to a group or conversation (especially important for younger children).
- Set up your childâs gaming accounts for them, so you know their login details.
- Set up in-game parental controls that will limit who your child can chat to. For example, you can create groups of real-life friends.
- Keep devices in family spaces â not bedrooms â so you can keep an eye on whatâs going on.
- Discourage the use of headphones so youâre able to listen in on your childâs chats.
- Familiarise yourself with gaming slang and acronyms so you can understand your childâs conversations,
- Turn on notifications for consoles like PlayStation and Xbox so youâre notified of any direct messages to your childâs account.
- If need be, turn off the chat feature within games.n there are problems
No matter how vigilant we are, children do get things wrong while gaming.
They might encounter interactions that feel uncomfortable, be unkind or offensive themselves, or even find themselves targeted by others. Itâs vital that you check in regularly with your child and make sure they know that if something happens, or if someone says something unpleasant or is acting strangely, they can tell you.
If your child has used unacceptable language or been unkind to others online. Remind them that the effect of their behaviour is the same as if it had happened in real life.
More worryingly, some children will find themselves in gaming situations that make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. If you discover your child is in a risky situation, donât panic. Take a deep breath and calm yourself before you react. Teach your child that there are strategies that they can take themselves, including muting or blocking the person who is causing offence, or using the Report function in a game.
Donât, however, expect your child to handle the situation alone â but do trust your instincts in terms of how serious things are. Itâs also a good idea to inform the school.
Every school has a member of staff responsible for safeguarding, and they can be a great support for both you and your child.
Taken from the SchoolRun.com
The Safeguarding Lead at Russell Lower School is: Mrs Sarah Knight
There are a number of resources to pull from, which come from the below and platform holder websites.
You may find these useful: https://www.askaboutgames.com/ & https://uk.pcmag.com/migrated-84555-gaming/94257/what-every-parent-needs-to-know-about-video-games
Understand PEGI age rating: https://www.askaboutgames.com/pegi-age-ratings
Setting ground rules for device use: https://www.askaboutgames.com/play-setting-ground-rules
Platform specific information:
- iPad/iPhone: https://www.askaboutgames.com/news/set-up-iphone-and-ipad-for-your-family & https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201304
- Android: https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340?hl=en
- Nintendo Switch: https://www.askaboutgames.com/news/set-up-nintendo-switch-for-your-family & https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Hardware/Nintendo-Switch-Parental-Controls/Nintendo-Switch-Parental-Controls-1183145.html
- PC (can very depending on Operating System (OS): https://news.microsoft.com/en-in/features/windows-10-parental-controls-feature/
- Xbox: https://www.askaboutgames.com/set-up-xbox-series-x-s & https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/family-hub
- PlayStation:https://www.askaboutgames.com/news/set-up-playstation-5-for-your-family & https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/support/account/ps5-parental-controls-spending-limits/ & https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/support/account/psn-safety-parents-guide/ & https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/psn-rules/
- Epic Games (they make Fortnite, Rocket League & others, plus they sell games): https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/parental-controls
- Steam (they are the biggest PC Games digital retailer): https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6B1A-66BE-E911-3D98#:~:text=Open%20the%20Steam%20Settings%20menu,and%20features%20for%20Family%20Mode.
Video game guides, more specific to individual games: https://www.askaboutgames.com/category/video-game-guides Roblox: https://www.askaboutgames.com/news/set-up-roblox-for-under-13s-and-over-13s & https://corp.roblox.com/safety-civility-resources/?section=Families&article=customizable-parental-controls
Minecraft:https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/parental-controls & https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/4408968616077-How-to-Manage-Parental-Consent-Family-Settings-and-Realms-Multiplayer-Access-for-a-Child-Account
A guide for finding family based games and board games: https://www.familygamingdatabase.com/
Additional paid options for additional tools and software to manage parental controls generally vs. anything gaming specific: https://uk.pcmag.com/parental-control-monitoring/67305/the-best-parental-control-software https://uk.pcmag.com/parental-control-monitoring/79219/the-best-parental-control-apps-for-your-phone