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Many of you choosing to read this article may be young people, or the parents of young people. It is a widely debated issue in the modern world about how damaging spending too much time online can be to young people, and I am here to debate both sides of the story.

Firstly, being online is safe when precautions are taken. All parents should make sure they can control which websites their teens are able to visit, and ensure that they feel as though they can talk freely to them about what they do when they’re online. If you think about it, surely it’s better to have your child online, safely in the house, rather than being elsewhere that you don’t know about. However, we do know the dangers. All too many children are being ‘groomed’ by older people online and being tricked, or encouraged, into meeting up with them..and this unfortunately often leads to the young person being injured.  But it can be prevented! Let you child know that you are happy for them to meet people online, as long as you can go with them to make sure they’re ok. Let them know that you trust them, it’s the other people you don’t trust.

Social networking sites are great for young people to consolidate their social network. It allows them to chat safely to people they know, and also allows them to ‘block’ anyone they don’t know from viewing their profile information. But, you need to make sure they know what’s acceptable to be posted on the internet. Things such as date of birth, hometown, school and personality details may seem innocent enough at the time, but if you allow professional hackers to get hold of this information, they could do anything. And, with more people than ever now using the internet for online banking and other finances, it is more important to be extra careful with the information we post online.

An issue which a lot of people don’t take into account is actual physical fitness. While it might seem a positive fact that your child is where you can keep an eye on them, exercise is important to, and if they’re spending hours per day on a computer, they may not be getting all of the exercise they need. You can help them with this by perhaps asking them to walk to the shops and pick up some shopping for you, or offering to take them swimming or to play badminton..you’d be surprised by how many teens would actually like to do these things given the chance!

Bullying is a huge issue online. When we are talking to people on the internet, a lot of norms and morels which we are governed by in everyday life are removed, meaning that we often say things to people that we wouldn’t dream of saying to them face to face. This can often result in bullying which, while it might not affect your child when they see the bully face to face, it can still be just as upsetting as regular bullying, if not more so, as often more than one person are involved, leading the young person to feel extremely victimised, and as though they are being ganged up on.

So, what can you do to help your child? Well firstly, you need to set boundaries about how long they can spend online each day. I would say, personally, that about 2 hours is all they need on weekdays, maybe being increased to 3 hours at the weekend. However, you should ask them to let you know what homework they need to do, and make sure that they do this first. You should talk to them about the dangers of being online, and let them know that no matter what happens, they can always tell you about  it, and count on you 100% support.  The internet can be a safe place for your child as long as you work together with them to build trust about the issue. It needn’t be an unpleasant experience for either of you.