How to support parents with online safety at home

To support parents with online safety at home, schools and communities should provide clear, practical conversation starters rather than overwhelming technical advice. By focusing on open communication and simple checking habits, adults can help children confidently spot digital deception.

When you hear about new online threats, it is completely natural to feel entirely out of your depth. Technology moves incredibly quickly, and terms like artificial intelligence, voice cloning and deepfakes can sound like science fiction. However, keeping children safe online does not require a degree in computer science. The fundamental skills of parenting and teaching apply just as much to the digital playground as they do to the physical one. The UK Online Safety Act is helping to place more responsibility on technology companies to protect users, but at home and in the classroom, adults remain the primary guides for young people navigating this space. You simply need to know what questions to ask and how to guide a child to pause before they act.

Moving away from fear and focusing on curiosity

When parents read news headlines about the latest digital scams, the immediate reaction is often panic. This can lead to strict device bans or heavy surveillance, which usually just pushes children to hide their online activities. Instead of operating from a place of fear, we can achieve far better results by encouraging a sense of healthy curiosity. Treat online safety like teaching a child to cross the road. You do not terrify them about cars; you teach them the rules of looking and listening so they can cross safely.

A very practical way to do this is to ask gentle, guiding questions when a child shows you something online. Imagine a ten-year-old brings you a video of a famous footballer offering free gaming currency. Instead of snatching the tablet away or immediately declaring it a scam, turn it into a puzzle. Ask them, “Does his voice sound quite right to you?” or “Why would a millionaire footballer be giving away free points for this specific game?” This helps the child develop their own critical eye.

By making it a shared investigation, you take the pressure off yourself to know all the answers immediately. You are simply teaching them to pause. Almost all online trickery relies on creating a false sense of urgency. If we can teach children to stop, take a breath, and ask questions before they click, we neutralise the vast majority of these threats.

How to spot AI deception together

Artificial intelligence has made it much easier for tricksters to create convincing fakes, often called deepfakes. You can explain a deepfake to a child as a very clever digital mask. Just like someone wearing a costume in a school play, an AI video is just a computer wearing a famous person’s face. While they can look convincing at first glance, they usually have small glitches that give them away if you know where to look.

When you are watching a suspicious video together, make a game of spotting the errors. Look closely at the person’s hands, as artificial intelligence often struggles to draw fingers correctly. Watch how often the person blinks, because fake videos sometimes feature people who stare unnaturally for long periods. Listen to the audio carefully. Does the voice sound a bit robotic, or does the movement of their mouth fail to match the words being spoken? Pointing these things out helps demystify the technology.

Voice cloning is another area that worries parents, where scammers copy the voice of a family member to ask for money or information. While this sounds frightening, the solution is beautifully low-tech. Agree on a secret family password. Tell your child that if they ever receive a call from you, or someone pretending to be you, asking for bank details or telling them they are in trouble, they must ask for the secret word. If the person on the phone cannot provide it, the child knows instantly that it is a trick.

Tackling phishing and trickery without the jargon

Phishing is one of the most common ways young people are targeted, but the terminology can be confusing. You can explain it simply by saying that scammers are ‘fishing’ for information, using digital bait to see who bites. For a primary or early secondary school child, this bait usually looks like an offer for free Robux, V-Bucks, or rare digital pets. The scammers know exactly what children want and use these temptations to steal passwords.

You can equip children with a very simple rule: if a message promises something highly desirable for free, but asks for your login details to get it, it is a trick. Legitimate game companies will never ask for a player’s password in a chat message or an email. Practise spotting these together. If a pop-up appears claiming they have won a prize, talk through why a stranger would want to give away something valuable for nothing in return.

Sometimes, these phishing messages appear to come from a real friend whose account has been compromised. A child might receive a message saying, “Look at this funny photo of you,” accompanied by a strange web link. Teach children to verify these claims outside of the game or app. If they receive a weird link from a schoolmate, they should wait and ask that friend in person the next day, or text them on a completely different app to ask if they actually sent it.

Building a culture of open reporting

The single biggest barrier to online safety is a child’s fear of having their device confiscated. If a child clicks a bad link, accidentally downloads a virus, or gives away their password, their first instinct is usually to hide the mistake. They know that if they tell a parent, the most likely consequence is losing their phone or tablet. To keep them safe, we have to remove this barrier entirely.

Parents and teachers need to establish a ‘no blame’ rule for online mistakes. Sit down with your child and make a clear promise: if they see something upsetting, or if they click on a link they suspect was a scam, they can tell you without getting into trouble and without losing their device. When they do eventually come to you with a problem, you must honour that promise. React calmly, thank them for being honest, and fix the issue together by changing passwords or running a virus scan.

For teachers, supporting parents means communicating this strategy home. Parents often feel they must be strict disciplinarians regarding screens, but school newsletters or parent evenings are great opportunities to gently suggest this softer approach. When children feel safe reporting their mistakes, adults get a much clearer picture of what they are actually facing online, making it vastly easier to protect them.

Try this at home

Here are three simple steps you can take today to build better online safety habits:

1. Create your family password. Choose a random word (like “blue-penguin”) and agree that everyone will use it to verify strange or urgent phone calls.
2. Introduce the three-second pause. Ask your child to practice counting to three in their head before clicking on any link sent by a stranger, using that time to ask themselves if the link makes sense.
3. Hunt for a fake together. Find a known deepfake video online (often found in news articles explaining the technology) and sit down to spot the visual mistakes, such as weird shadows or blurring around the mouth.

Frequently asked questions

At what age should I start talking to my child about deepfakes? You can introduce the concept as soon as they start watching videos independently, typically around age six or seven. Keep it simple by comparing deepfakes to digital costumes or special effects in films, ensuring the tone is curious rather than frightening.

What if my child knows more about technology than I do? This is very common and perfectly fine. While they might know how to navigate the menus faster, you have decades of life experience and understand human behaviour, manipulation, and motives much better than they do.

How do I explain voice cloning without scaring them? Focus on the solution rather than the threat. Explain that computers can now mimic voices just like parrots do, and then immediately introduce the fun, practical solution of having a secret family password to easily outsmart the computers.

What should a child do if they have already clicked a bad link? They should immediately close the web browser or app and tell a trusted adult. The adult can then help them change their passwords, check their account for unauthorized purchases, and run a standard security scan on the device.

At Safety Spotters, we know that lecturing children about technology rarely works, which is why our books turn these vital lessons into engaging stories that children actually remember and enjoy. If you want to help the young people in your life navigate the digital world with confidence, you can claim a free digital copy of our latest adventure for parents and teachers at safetyspotters.com/free.