Positive Parenting: A Father’s Day tribute and keeping our children safe online

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by Kelsey Rasmussen

Last June, this column was honored to celebrate Father’s Day with a reflection on fatherhood by longtime community member and Stockbridge Jr./Sr. High School social worker John Twining. John was a dedicated family man, a highly regarded and respected peer, and a fatherly role model to countless students. He will be truly missed. Use this link to find and reread his June 2024 article and sage fatherhood advice: stockbridgecommunitynews.com/positive-parenting-2/ 

This month our Positive Parenting column will pause our book review to celebrate fathers and fatherhood and to focus on ways to keep our children safe online. Traditionally in Western culture, fathers are fearless leaders. For example, Judeo-Christian teaching mandates fathers to lead their households as loving patriarchs. A character in Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” describes fathers as warriors who teach us how to protect ourselves, “to ride a horse into battle, when needed.”

Sometimes parenting seems like an unending, thankless job. To fathers near and far who protect and provide: thank you. We see you, we need you, and we love you.

Keeping our children safe

Parents aren’t the only ones we rely on to keep our children safe. The local May School Board meeting was packed with students, parents, teachers and staff invested in ensuring our schools and children thrive. It is clear that our community values protecting children. At school, teachers and administrators are in loco parentis, meaning they legally assume the place or position of a parent. Toward that end, I presented an idea to the school board on an important way they can protect our children who spend time online at school. Later in this column, I’ll also share ideas for things you can do at home to protect your kids when they are online. 

Although kindergarteners spend very limited time on Chromebook computers, while I was substitute teaching for kindergarten, I noticed they were exposed to online ads during that time. Ad blockers are not installed, nor are there restrictions preventing 5-year olds from using the Chrome web browser to open YouTube.

To be sure, my classroom management could have been better, but this is a district-level technology infrastructure issue, not just a classroom management concern. I attended the May school board meeting and recommended the board work with Ingham ISD to do the following:

  • Install ad blockers district-wide
  • Purchase licensing for COPPA-compliant educational apps with ad-free experiences (and prohibit student use of all other apps on campus)
  • Use Mobile Device Management (MDM) via Google Admin Console to pre-load vetted content/applications onto ChromeBooks
  • Deploy a whitelist-only policy granting student access exclusively to vetted applications.

Fortunately, Superintendent Friddle took swift action and sent our recommendation to ISD technology director Michael Partridge, establishing a follow-up meeting to create a plan of action.

Many of you may be thinking: Most of us enjoy online services, so what’s the big deal? What about the advertising these children consume at home?

Software products, especially “free” services like Google, make their fortunes through advertising. Worldwide, advertising to children is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Tech companies routinely settle or lose lawsuits for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule. VTech, who makes something like an app store for child-directed educational apps, settled for $650,000 in civil penalties (2015); Google LLC and its subsidiary YouTube, LLC: $170 million (2019); Microsoft: $20 million (2023); Amazon: $25 million (2023); Epic Games: $275 million (2023); and the list goes on and on.

The Federal Trade Commission and NY Attorney General alleged in 2019 that YouTube violated the COPPA Rule “by collecting personal information—in the form of persistent identifiers that are used to track users across the Internet—from viewers of child-directed channels, without first notifying parents and getting their consent. YouTube earned millions of dollars by using the identifiers, commonly known as cookies, to deliver targeted ads to viewers of these channels, according to the complaint.” 

Worse, children are particularly susceptible to being influenced by ads. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends: “Ban all commercial advertising to children younger than 7 years, and limit advertising to older children and teenagers. All advertising should be clearly labeled as such (e.g., as sponsored content).” 

Suffice it to say, Kindergarteners—and children in general—need adults to protect them from exposure to and manipulation by digital ads. 

Activity Highlight

  1. Get skeptical: Speak with younger children about what ads are trying to sell or why their favorite app has features, such as autoplay, that keep them watching longer. For older children, discussions can revolve around influencers, unpacking messages about consumerism, or whether they understand all of their privacy settings. 
  2. Block ads on your home wifi and devices: 
    1. Use privacy-respecting browsers like Brave or Firefox. Additionally, Firefox users should take advantage of the Privacy Badger or ublock origin plugin. (Note: ublock is better, but Privacy Badger is a little easier for novices.)
    1. On iPhones, use a system-wide ad blocker like AdGuard or NextDNS. These block ads or trackers in apps, not just in the web browser. 
    1. To block ads on every device on a home network, use NextDNS and set the DNS settings on your home router to those of NextDNS. For those who like to tinker and self-host use PiHole.

Resources:

Sources

Children are particularly susceptible to being influenced by ads. Adults need to protect kids from exposure to and manipulation by digital ads. Image credit: Surface on unsplash.com

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