5 Tips for Teaching Kids the Cybersecurity Basics

Since teaching online safety isn’t a priority in public schools, parents must handle the fundamentals. Here’s where to start.

- KIM KEY

When I attended public school in the late 90s and early 00s, I learned how to perform now-archaic tasks such as writing cursive script, balancing a checkbook, and navigating the Dewey Decimal System. I’m pretty sure my compatriots from the Z and Alpha generations have never practiced dinner party etiquette during a home economics class, and no one born after, say, 1998 knows the fear that comes with approaching a whirring circular saw during shop class. The public school curriculum in the United States has evolved over the decades—but it needs to change faster to help keep everyone safe in the digital age.

HELP WANTED: CYBERSECURITY EDUCATORS

Cybersecurity education just isn’t being taught widely. In a 2020 survey of educators and school officials, more than half said their schools did not offer cybersecurity education. The survey, which is by cyber.org, a K-12 cyber education platform funded partly by the US government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also found that only about a third (37%) of elementary and middle schools infused cybersecurity education into their curriculums. That’s unacceptable, especially since research shows many children start using online devices before they’re five years old.

Kids may latch onto connected tech quickly, but that doesn’t mean they know how to use it safely without guidance from the adults in their lives. Given that there was an 85% increase in online attacks involving account login and registration details last year, it’s clear that it’s time to start teaching basic online security rules in school and at home.