If you’ve ever played X-box Live, you know the conversations can get pretty rough. Not only that, but there are truly some predatory people out there who are waiting to talk to innocent, unsuspecting children. As a parent, that’s scary as hell! Thankfully, we have some xbox for kids tips that will help you and your child navigate this popular platform safely.
Many of the tips are applicable to anyone online gaming platform… you’ll just have to find the parental controls that are applicable to PlayStation, Nintendo, and your child’s favorite PC games. Read our post on Roblox safety tips for help with that game!
How to Talk to Your Kids About Online Gaming Safety
Learn About the Games They Play
The more you know about the games your kids play, the better. While some games can be played on the platform without being connected to the internet, that’s becoming increasingly rare. Odds are your child’s X-box is connected to X-box live, so depending on the age of your child, you’ll need to adjust the parental controls to your liking.
More than that, you want to know what kind of content is in the game. You absolutely can and should read game reviews on sites like Common Sense Media, but really, playing the game with your child will help you best determine if you’re okay with the content.
Make Sure Your Kids Know What Not to Share Online
You also want to talk to your kids about what not to share online. Make sure they know not to use their real name as their handle or to give their passwords to their friends. They also should never speak about where they live or go to school or share anything that could be used to find them or access personal information.
We’ve also talked to our son about never sharing credit card information. While we personally haven’t encountered this, we’ve heard stories about kids asking their friends to get their parents’ cards out to tell them the numbers, so we want to make sure he should never give out our financial information.
Limit Friend Requests
For a while, we allowed our son to accept friend requests, but upon reviewing his friend list just a short time later, we found that he had accepted requests from people that he didn’t know at all. We purged the listed and limited it to only the kids we’ve actually met in real life.
We also turned off the ability to accept friend requests since then. He is still able to add his friends, but they have to tell him their username so we can add them manually. This has saved us a lot of headache and worry.
Let Your Kids Know They Can Come to You
You want to make sure your kids know they can come to you if they experience something that makes them uncomfortable. Explain that they should get up and walk away from the game immediately if something questionable happens. They should come to you and tell you what happened so that you can help.
It’s so important to talk to your kids about online gaming safety. The last thing you want is for your children to give out personal information or expose themselves to inappropriate content. It’s important to know which games your kids are playing and to be as informed as possible about those games and their gameplay.