Smart Safety: Keeping Kids Safe Online

Children, tweens, and teens have been quickly forced online for all aspects of their lives with severely limited cyber protection in gaming and are increasingly suffering from harassment. Additionally, the pandemic ignited a period of exceptional growth for the gaming sector leaving these gamers more exposed to the dangers that come with multiplayer gaming. With the advent of the developing Metaverse this problem will only increase. 

“With more children being pushed online, parents are demanding the most technically advanced online software to protect their children. By utilizing the most advanced AI technology, parents can finally feel confident that their children can play in a safe metaverse environment,” said Ron Kerbs, Founder and CEO of Kidas. 

I had a chance to learn about keeping kids safe online in this interview.

How prevalent is cyberbullying in online games? 59% have been bullied or harassed online .We also know young people who experience cyberbullying are at a greater risk than those who don’t for both self-harm and suicidal behaviors.

How can parents and caregivers help protect kids?

Parents, caregivers, and guardians have a tough task of keeping children safe while enabling them to socially develop and explore their hobbies. Digital autonomy is safest when parents are able to educate children on what good digital stewardship looks like. There are core actions that set a good foundation for protection:

• Never provide personal and sensitive information: phone numbers, log in credentials, addresses, school names, or pictures if asked for them
• Don't click on links in in-game chats or chat app- these are often phishing scams 
• The internet is (mostly) globally accessible to all, this creates opportunity for adult strangers to pray upon younger players who may not recognize digital dangers. 
• Don't engage with hurtful cruel talk. There is a difference between appropriate "trash talk" while gaming and intentionally unkind language. Parents should feel comfortable explaining the difference between the two.  

Caregivers can't always be there to hear and read everything. So 24/7 adult oversight simply ins't feasible. And we know there are many benefits to online multip player gaming for social development as well as sharpening problem solving and critical thinking skills. That's why we developed Protect Me by Kidas. Our technology respects privacy by only activating while games are being played. If a threat of any kind is detected, we share this via a custom report to parents every week.  

If cyberbullying occurs, what can adults do to minimize its effects on kids' self-esteem? Believe it or not, our research shows how difficult it is for parents to discuss these things with their children. That's why all of our alerts come with guidance and suggested approaches for how to talk to your child about them. Each time a threat is detected we provide support on actions to take and how to talk to children about it with appropriate recommendations. 

 Kidas recently launched child PC-based protection platform ProtectMe™. Kidas is developing a suite of protection tools and a parent knowledge community hub to educate parents and protect children from online dangers. 

The Kidas platform’s unique learning capability means it gets smarter as it encounters new ways children are being attacked whether it be by new word types, phrases, dangerous trends, hate speech or even financial scams. As these are encountered, ProtectMe™ recognizes contextual patterns over time and alerts parents with weekly notifications and guidance. ProtectMe™ goes beyond keyword recognition to understand words in context. 

Kidas currently analyzes communication within over 80 of the most popular games such as Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite with more added weekly and supports communication apps, such as Discord, that are used for social gaming. 

ProtectMe™offers many benefits to parents: 

1. Parents are empowered - Kidas’ weekly report empowers parents by providing them with insight and an understanding of risks and threats their children face in online gaming.

2. Parents learn how to keep their kids safe while gaming - Kidas’ novel context understanding algorithm securely identifies instances of cyberbullying, predation, and toxic gaming behavior parents wouldn’t otherwise know about allowing them to intervene and keep their children safe. 

3. Parents are at peace with their child’s gaming - Parents feel a sense of peace knowing that they are gaining all the insights they need to allow their children to play games they otherwise wouldn't feel comfortable with. 

4. Parents get expert notifications and guidance - With every notification parents receive in their child's weekly report, they are also provided with resources and recommendations from Kidas’ team of researchers and bullying experts on how to deal with the threat the child has been exposed to. 

5. Parents feel comfortable discussing online safety with their children without being overbearing With access to Kidas’ members blog and recommendations written by Kidas experts, parents are provided with all the resources they need to feel comfortable communicating with their children. 

Kidas is quick and easy to install. Parents simply sign up at Kidas.net and select the monthly or annual subscription; the first month is always free. The monthly subscription is $6/month and the annual subscription is $60/year. With a few simple clicks and authorization to connect to your child’s Roblox account, the install process is short and simple. 

About Kidas 

Kidas started with the realization that while most players enjoy the social aspect of gaming, younger players and their parents rarely know how to manage the inherent risks of online anonymity. With this lack of knowledge, they are vulnerable to threats like cyberbullying and online predators. CEO Ron Kerbs, a former developer of threat detection solutions and an avid gamer himself, decided to solve this problem by applying advanced technology to video games making the experience safer for the youngest of gamers. Kidas’ mission is to create the ultimate front-line defense for kids and parents in managing the growing risks of online toxic activity. Parents subscribe to Kidas’ service monthly or annually. Once they have subscribed, they download the Kidas software to the PC that the child plays video games on. The software analyzes in-game voice and text activity for language and behavior aligned with bullying, threats, and predation. Custom weekly reports are generated and emailed to parents letting them know if their child came in contact with such threats. For more information, visit www.kidas.net/.