Prevent exposure to inappropriate content
How to keep your child safe online
Get tips on how to use tech tools to filter and block inappropriate content on children’s device and what conversations to have to keep them safe online.
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Quick tips
3 tips to prevent exposure to adult content
Set parental controls across platforms and devices. Parental controls can help block and filter content to prevent exposure to inappropriate material.
Cross-device parental controls include:
- Apple’s Screen Time (available with iOS)
- Google Family Link (available across devices and apps)
- Microsoft Family Safety (available across Microsoft devices, including Xbox, tablets, phones and laptops)
Use the Little Digital Helps Toolkit, created with Tesco Mobile, to get personalised parental controls advice.
Talk to your child about their interests to help them find suitable sites to visit and apps to use. Review these sites as they get older and use anything new together.
Learn how to help children find new apps.
Parental controls are a great safety net. However, they cannot replace the benefits of open conversations.
Talk to your child about what inappropriate content is and why it’s harmful to some. Discuss their own experiences and ask them to take you through how they have dealt with it.
Together, discuss the process for reporting inappropriate content and how you can support them. Some children feel awkward about going to their parents, or like they might get in trouble, so open and regular conversations will help them feel like they can come to you if something goes wrong.
How to talk about adult content
As soon as your child starts to use the internet — or before — talk about what they might find there. Here are some tips to support you.
Talk about what it looks like
Prevent exposure to inappropriate content by helping your child understand what it is. Explain that sometimes they might come across things that they’d prefer not to see, or that you would prefer they didn’t see.
This content might show scary things or things that make them feel uncomfortable. Or, it might be content that is violent, sexual, hateful or misleading. As such, you as their parent might not want them to see it.
Agree on ground rules
Once your child understands what inappropriate content is, clearly explain what is or is not acceptable for them to access. With older children, you might involve them in these decisions while helping them set safety features on their favourite device or platform.
With your child, decide on the content best-suited for their needs, maturity and development. Violent video games, for instance, might scare one child while another isn’t bothered at all. So, decide together what works and revisit those ground rules as they grow.
Have regular check-ins
Have these conversations regularly. Ask them about their favourite game or content creator, whether they’ve seen anything worrying and what they did to tackle it.
Normalising conversations can help children feel more willing to come to you for help. It can also help you pick up on any misunderstandings or gaps in their understanding of actions to take.
How to manage access to adult content
As a parent you have some decisions to make about how you want your child to engage online and on social media and what measures you want to put in place to help protect them.
Along with setting up parental controls, you can also encourage your child to use child-friendly search engines, such as Swiggle. Additionally, you can activate SafeSearch settings across search engines like Google and Bing.
You can also activate the safety measures offered by different sites. TikTok, for example, has Family Pairing to help you manage your child’s digital experiences.
Explore other social media apps guides to manage access to inappropriate content.
Explore our how-to guides
Learn how to manage parental controls and prevent access to inappropriate content.
TikTok
How to use TikTok’s privacy settings
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YouTube Kids
How to set YouTube Kids
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Google SafeSearch
How to turn on Google SafeSearch
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