For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Contact: Nazneen Ahmed
919-716-0060
(RALEIGH) Attorney General Josh Stein today joined students at Ira B. Jones Elementary School in Asheville to share the North Carolina Department of Justice’s tech safety agreement, a new resource to help parents and caregivers keep their kids safe online. The agreement is intended to facilitate discussions between children and adults about how to use the internet and social media responsibly while safeguarding kids’ well-being and personal information, be on the alert for warning signs of scams and predatory behavior, and make good decisions. The agreement can be downloaded here.
“Keeping our kids safe wherever they are is job one for parents and our state government – there is nothing more important,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “More and more, that’s online. With our students back in school, I hope that parents use this agreement to have important conversations with their children about online safety and responsible screen time. The students I met today are smart, engaged, and inquisitive, and I’m so pleased that they take their online safety seriously.”
On average, 8- to 12-year-olds use screens for more than five and a half hours a day, and 13- to 18-year-olds use screens for more than eight and a half hours a day. The tech agreement helps young people better understand who they should and shouldn’t talk to online, the information and content that is not appropriate to share, when to share concerns about their health and safety with adults, and the importance of balancing screen time with offline activities. More information on internet safety is available at www.ncdoj.gov/internetsafety.
Attorney General Stein has been working to keep kids safe, including by leading the fight against the teen vaping epidemic, investigating TikTok and Facebook for possible harm to kids’ mental health, and protecting kids from child sex abuse with the SAFE Child Act of 2019. This law protects children from predators wherever they are, including online.
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