Robyn Rishani Robyn Rishani - Online World Expert, Speaker & Educator

When it comes to internet use, I’m a big advocate for setting boundaries and guidelines on what they do with their devices and how much time they spend online and what sort of activities they do online. It’s really age-dependent on how much time you spend or let them spend on the internet and what sort of activities they’re allowed to do, what sort of apps they’re allowed to do and things like that.

I say to parents, “Place boundaries and guidelines.” Place boundaries and guidelines similar to what you would in the traditional playground, the traditional playground being in the offline world. So, for example, we’re really good at saying, “No, you can’t go out at 8:00 at night, you must be home by 7:00 PM and if you’re not, this, this and this is going to happen. These are going to be the consequences.” The child comes home and all is good and well, hopefully.

Apply those same boundaries and guidelines to the online world. If they are playing a video game, “No, you must be off by 7:00,” for example.

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When a child has a smartphone or any sort of device that has an internet connection, they have access to the entire world, including the possibility to connect with any of the 6.7 billion people on the planet.

There are thousands of apps out there now, so many in fact that it’s impossible to keep up with them all which means your kid is probably always going to be one step in front of you right? Not necessarily…
Think of the app store as a breakfast isle in a grocery store: I like to keep things simple when it comes to technology. It’s not as hard as you may think. All social media apps and sites consists of only a few components; photo’s comments, videos, liking and following someone and re-posting. That’s it!

The cyber playground is the online world in which we all interact. The traditional playground is the world in which we interact without the internet, put the two together and it's just one world. We need to understand both to raise healthy happy kids.