On the Internet: Our First Talk About Online Safety

On the Internet: Our First Talk about Online Safety is a new book in “The World Around us” series, following On the Playground: Our First Talk about Prejudice, On the News: Our First Talk about Tragedy and On Our Street: Our First Talk about Poverty. As in the previous titles, this nonfiction picture book encourages and facilitates a conversation about current, complex topics.

Eleven questions or statements, presented from the point of view of a child, are briefly explored. The queries primarily focus on socializing online and how those interactions are not always positive: “Why would people put mean or inappropriate things online?”; “One time I saw a picture on my big sister’s social media account. It was of a friend of hers from school. People were teasing the girl in the comments”; “Thinking about this stuff makes me kind of uncomfortable and angry”. The answers, written by Dr. Jillian Roberts, a child psychologist, professor and parent, introduce concepts of boundaries, privacy and cyberbullying. Sidebars provide a more child-friendly and relatable definition of the highlighted terms, including, for example, “Boundaries are kind of an invisible safety fence”, and privacy “is when you are being left alone, free from the attention of others.”

As the focus of the book is more on discussing thoughts and feelings that may arise when communicating with others online, the technical advice given is very general (“If you use social media networks, learn more about their privacy settings and how to use them properly”), and children and caregivers would need to look elsewhere for more in-depth information. A list of online resources is featured at the end of the book, including Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy and the Government of Canada’s Get Cyber Safe websites.

Full-colour, stock photographs show children studiously working on computers, texting on smartphones, and reading under the bedcovers at night by the light of a laptop. Some of the stock photos feature children much younger than the target audience of the book, such as an image of a preschool classroom with the children in a circle and a chalk board easel in the background displaying the numbers one to five. Watercolour illustrations by Jane Heinrichs are also included throughout and show a diverse group of children reflecting upon messages in the text, and, at the end, they gaze directly at the reader, holding up letter reminders to THINK before you post: T (“is is True?”) H (“is it Helpful?”) I (“is it Inspiring?”) N (“is it Necessary?”) K (“is it Kind?”).

Considering today’s young readers have grown up in a digital world, some of the questions posed seem to lack authenticity: “How can the Internet be unsafe if it’s inside my computer?”; “Do people ever use the Internet for good things?” Nevertheless, On the Internet: Our First Talk about Online Safety can start a conversation, for both children and caregivers, about navigating the online waters.