How Coding Can Keep Kids Safer Online

Digital natives are growing up in a world where the internet is not just the information highway but also the way they socialize, learn, and play. As a result of their life online, kids are engaging with digital devices to a much greater extent than previous generations.

The good news is that it's much easier for parents to start teaching their kids how to stay safe online. Check out these ways to teach coding to your children so they can better protect themselves from cyberbullying or other online threats.

When Is the Right Time to Start Teaching Kids How to Code?

As with any new skill, coding is best taught at a young age to help kids develop strong habits and overcome the challenges they face as they grow up. Also, the earlier they start, the more they will retain. There are a lot of great apps and programs that teach programming for kids, using gamification and reward mechanics to encourage them along.

If you already know how to code, the best time to start teaching it to your kids is when they are 4 or 5 years old. By that age, their brains are getting used to the structure and sequencing of code, meaning they are learning to think in the same way that they process visual patterns, which is one of the hardest skills to teach.

How can coding help kids stay safe online?

Coding allows children to learn about safety online by reducing risks and learning how to identify and correct their mistakes.

When kids learn to code, they learn how to think like a programmer and understand how to develop logic in order to make good decisions and defend themselves against attackers.

You can teach your kids the following:

• How to recognize if a post or comment is malicious or spam.
• How to block cyberbullies.
• How to create private accounts that are difficult to track.
• How to use a VPN.

What if my child engages in hacking or troll culture?

This is something important for parents to think about, and a good reason to be aware of what your child is doing on the computer. While games like Minecraft and Roblox are popular games for children, it's important to know who your child is actually socializing with within these anonymous avatar worlds.

Troll communities engage in aggressive behavior online in order to achieve social dominance. And because these communities operate as a hivemind, your child can easily get swept up in online bullying culture themselves.

So while teaching your child to code, encourage them to spend time on the computer developing their own ideas, but be aware that these same concepts and lessons can be used for negative purposes.

On the other hand, by instilling good values in your child, they may become a "whitehat" – otherwise known as an ethical hacker. Your child could, for example, protect their Minecraft server and friends from malicious attacks by bad hackers, and write server scripts to prevent online cheating, as well as help fix bugs or make other improvements to their server.

Conclusion

Encouraging children to use computers and computers, in general, is a good thing. Research shows that when kids use the internet, they are better informed and less lonely, depressed, and withdrawn.

So if your child wants to learn to code, teach them the basics and ask them to develop their own ideas – or suggest that they volunteer to help an organisation that they care about by fixing bugs in their game or programming a new feature for their website.