Cybersecurity education simply isn’t taught widely in the US. The US Department of Education offers a fact sheet and portal for cybersecurity educators, but that’s nowhere near enough.
According to Keeper’s 2024 Cybersecurity in Schools report, 21% of parents surveyed said that their child’s school provided guidance on creating secure passwords. In the same survey, 19% admitted to reusing passwords across personal and school accounts, indicating that lackluster cybersecurity education in schools is just one part of the problem.
Kids may latch onto connected tech quickly, but that doesn’t mean they know how to use it safely without guidance from the adults in their lives. After all, criminals target kids on gaming platforms, and AI-generated disinformation and misinformation spread like wildfire on social media. Keeping kids safe online means giving them the tools and knowledge they need to fend off predators and scammers, while also helping them develop the media literacy required to resist persuasive marketing messages.
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5 Tips for Teaching Cybersecurity at Home
A lot of parents don’t know where to begin when it comes to teaching kids to be safer online. Luckily, you don’t need to know a lot of jargon or have a computer science degree to understand online security basics. Here are some simple ideas to start establishing a home cybersecurity curriculum:
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Look for Modern, Kid-Focused Cybersecurity Education
First, I recommend taking time to search the internet to find cybersecurity resources. There’s a lot of cybersecurity advice available online, but a lot of it is woefully out of date or not applicable to kids. That’s why I recommend starting your educational journey with cyber.org. The site offers free activities and courses for parents and educators who want to learn more about cybersecurity and teach children. -
Stop Oversharing Online
Don’t want your kids to share the intimate details of their lives with strangers online? As an adult, you should consider holding back from oversharing online, too. Scammers can use the information your family shares on social media or in chat messages to commit identity theft. Be a good role model by protecting your personal information online and teaching kids to do the same. Here are a few easy habit changes you can try today: give up as little info as possible while online shopping, don’t post photos of your children on your public social media accounts, and stop entering personal information or photos into ChatGPT or other LLMs. For more cyber hygiene tips, check out our cybersecurity checklist. -
Create a Cybersecurity Toolbox for Your Child
Introduce your kids to a password manager and help them create their vault. Password managers eliminate the need to remember incredibly complex strings of characters, and they keep your online accounts safe. Invest in a family or premium password management system, and allow your kids to maintain their own logins. Once the child is familiar with the password manager, consider adding an authenticator app and a secure messaging app to shore up your child’s online defenses. -
Monitor Your Child’s Social Media Consumption
Every parent knows that it is incredibly hard to keep track of all of a kid’s online activity, but one area you may want to focus on is your child’s engagement on social platforms. Kids often use the internet for gaming, social media, and streaming. You may be able to suss out a potential online scam situation or other inappropriate chatter just by observing your child’s online activity. A free parental control solution, such as Google’s Family Link or Apple’s Screen Time, can give you an overview of your child’s online activity throughout the day. If your children are young, you may want to keep their computer or other online device in a public area of the home, so they can talk to you in person about any iffy online behavior they encounter, and you can keep an eye on what they do online. -
Develop Online Media Literacy
In a similar vein, just as kids can’t trust every person they meet online, it’s important for them to know they can’t trust every source of information online either. It’s incredibly easy these days to fake photos, videos, or audio clips using generative-AI-powered apps. It’s also easy to use LLMs like ChatGPT to plagiarize text or modify it for malicious purposes or, just as often, for jokes and memes. Show your kids how to verify if media is real or fake, and find sources to vet information they find online.
Establish Household Rules for Online Behavior
(Credit: MoMo Productions via Getty Images)
When you give children their first internet-connected devices, take the time to establish some house rules and keep an open and ongoing dialogue about them. Here are some suggested starter rules:
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Do not store credit card information or other sensitive information in online accounts.
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Scan privacy policies for data collection red flags before downloading new apps or other software.
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Create and store all online login information in a password manager.
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Keep antivirus software running in the background.
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Do not download apps that aren’t from Google Play or Apple’s App Store.
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Use extreme caution when clicking links from people you don’t know.
Go Beyond Parental Controls
In the past, I’ve discussed the benefits and limitations of using parental control software to keep kids safe online. The best parental control applications can make it harder for your child to access websites with adult subject matter. However, the software cannot teach kids how not to fall for scammers chatting them up on random Discord servers or how to spot and avoid common phishing attempts via chat, email, or direct message. That’s where parenting takes over. Until schools start teaching kids how to interact online safely, it’s up to the adults in their lives to take charge of their cybersecurity education.
It’s Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
About Kim Key
Senior Security Analyst
