Health and Wellbeing
10 Ideas to Help Your Teen be Happy Online
Swap the rows about screen time for conversations that help your teenager enjoy being online and come to you when something goes wrong.
- 48 minutes
- 12 modules
- Certificate
Members
Parent membership: all 50 courses for parents and carers, £40 a year or £4 a month after 14 days free.
Already have an account? Sign in
What you'll learn
- Agree family ground rules for life online that everyone sticks to
- Build a no-blame culture so your teen tells you when things go wrong
- Talk about healthy friendships and relationships, online and off
- Help your teen clear their timeline of accounts that pull them down
- Plan for your worst fears and for the best their online life could bring
About this course
To a lot of teenagers, a friend they've never met in person is still a real friend, and time online is just part of life. If you only ever ask about screen time, you'll hear very little about the rest.
These 10 ideas help you get alongside your teen instead. Show real interest in what they do online. Agree ground rules as a family, including ones you'll keep yourself (if you ask them to put the phone down, yours goes down too). Talk about what a good friendship looks like, the stories people choose to tell with a filter, and what to do about trolls. Help them clear out the accounts that leave them feeling worse.
The most important idea is a no-blame promise: whatever happens online, they can tell you and you'll help. Say it often, so that if something serious does go wrong, you're who they turn to.
12 modules
Open in order
- 2 min
Introduction
- 2 min
Wrap Up & Resources
- 7 min
Idea 1 – Show an interest in their life online
- 7 min
Idea 2 – Set ground rules together
- 5 min
Idea 3 – Be a good role model
- 6 min
Idea 4 – Create a no blame culture
- 4 min
Idea 5 – Discuss healthy relationships
- 5 min
Idea 6 – Encourage them to cleanse their timeline
- 4 min
Idea 7 – Talk about the stories people tell
- 6 min
Idea 8 – Don’t feed the trolls
- 4 min
Idea 9 – Take it offline
- 3 min
Idea 10 – Plan for the worst and hope for the best!