I work in cybersecurity and I have seven kids. We’re a blended family and they range from nine to twenty-five. Between work and home, you’d think I’d have online safety sorted. I don’t.
Every so often one of the younger ones asks for a new app or game. Sometimes I know it, sometimes I’ve never heard of it. So I do what most parents do and look it up, and find one story saying it’s harmless, another saying it ruined someone’s life, and a third written by someone who has clearly never met a young person.
Work rules don’t work at the dinner table
At work, keeping people safe online looks like policies, settings and a signed acknowledgement. At home that doesn’t fly. I’m not sure how a twelve page phone policy would go down over dinner.
At home it’s you and someone you care about, trying to make a choice together. You want them to understand what’s good about the thing they’re asking for and what could go wrong. And you need to understand why it matters so much to them.
That last part is easy to miss. We hear “I want Roblox” or “I want Snapchat”, but the app is often just the thing they’re asking for. The real reason might be that their friends are there, or everyone at school talks about it, or they love making things, or they don’t want to be left out. So the conversation isn’t only about an app. It’s about friends, trust and belonging, which is a much bigger talk.
None of it has really gone away
A lot of us grew up on the early internet: chat rooms, MSN, MySpace. We talked to people who said they were our age. Maybe they were. Maybe they were twenty years older. Looking back, some of those chats weren’t right, and we didn’t have a word for it at the time. We just knew something was off, and we got out of there.
We learnt most of it by getting it wrong. Our parents were doing their best, but it was new to them too.
None of that has gone away. It’s moved. The apps, games and phones have changed, but there are still people who lie about who they are, still people who build trust before asking for something they shouldn’t, and still scams that make you feel scared and rushed. The screens look new. The way people behave doesn’t.
What the Online Safety Deck is
That’s why I made the Online Safety Deck. It’s a free, printable set of 52 conversation cards, thirteen in each of four colour coded categories:
- Decode the Want. The app isn’t the want, the thing it does is. “If you could only have one app, which would it be?”
- Spot the Weird. Urgency, secrecy, free stuff, a friend who suddenly types differently. “Do this right now, don’t tell anyone.” What does that mean?
- Trust and Verify. If something feels wrong, what’s the next move? “What would you come to me about even if you thought I’d be cross?”
- The Long View. The internet has a memory. “If a photo of you today turned up in ten years, would you mind?”
There are questions for younger kids, questions for teenagers, and questions grown ups should probably answer too. There are no scores and no right answers. You’re not trying to catch anyone out.
How to use it without it becoming a lecture
Online safety isn’t one big talk you have once. It’s lots of small ones over years. It starts with “I want to play Roblox with my friends” and later becomes “someone I know messaged me and needs help right now, but it doesn’t feel right. What do you think?” That second conversation is where we want to end up.
A few things that help:
- One card a week is plenty. Leave it on the kitchen table, or bring one up in the car or on a walk.
- Ask, then answer first. Going first makes it safe to be honest.
- Listen before you fix. Every part of you will want to grab the phone and sort it out. I’ve done exactly that more times than I’d like. If every honest conversation ends with a lost device or an argument, the honesty stops, and so does your chance to help.
- Follow the card if it opens something. The card is just the doorway.
The goal isn’t a house where nobody makes mistakes. It’s enough trust that they’ll say something when it matters. Our older kids still bring us things that don’t add up: a message, a person, something odd. They don’t need us to run their lives. They just know they can ask, “Can you have a look at this?” That’s what I’m hoping to build with the younger ones too.
The same habits protect a business
This isn’t only a family thing. The signals in Spot the Weird, like urgency, secrecy and an unusual request from someone you know, are the same ones behind most of the payment scams we see aimed at Queensland businesses. “Ring back on the number you already have” works just as well for a changed bank account on an invoice as it does for a message from a friend.
Download the deck from theonlinesafetydeck.au, print it, and pick one question for this week. If you’d like your team to have the same habits at work, get in touch.