How Your Child’s Love For Fortnite Can Present An Online Safety Concern
Do you happen to be one of the many Canadian parents who have a child or children addicted to Fortnite? Developed by Epic Games and released in 2017, Fortnite is a video game that offers a variety of game modes. They include a battle royale in which up to 100 players can fight it out until there is only one person left standing. As well, there is “Save the World”, which is a shoot-‘em-up zombie-like creature survival game for up to four players.
Fortnite is certainly not the Super Mario Bros. game that many of us grew up playing on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. In addition to its high-resolution graphics and extremely violent nature, Fortnite is also an online game. This means that your child could be playing with any number of complete strangers at any time. While this may appear harmless at first glance, the gaming situation presented by Fortnite creates a legitimate safety concern.
Fortnite players may encourage your child to release sensitive information.
While playing Fortnite, a child doesn’t just fictionally interact with other game characters. They also speak, in real-time, to many of their opponents. In some cases, children have been known to explain such things as where they live or go to school. Not truly knowing the person on the other end of that conversation clearly makes for a potentially dangerous situation.
As Sofia Kaufman points out on Aura.com, the mental strain of excessive gaming isn’t the only risk associated with letting your child play Fortnite. “Parents must also consider threats from hackers, scammers, and cyberbullies,” she warns, “Cybercriminals created over 878,000 phishing pages in 2022 — mimicking sites for Fortnite and other popular games, including Minecraft and Roblox. Your child could fall victim to identity theft if fraudsters get a hold of your family’s personal information.”
Your child’s Fortnite play should come with ground rules.
Consider the way you provide your child with safety information offline. For example, when preparing your kids to walk from school without supervision for the very first time, you go through some steps before giving them the house key. Those steps may include walking the route with them, talking about crossing at crosswalks and corners, looking both ways before crossing the street, not talking to strangers and paying attention to their surroundings.
It’s important to prepare your kids in a very similar manner before giving them access to the internet. In many cases, online games require participants to be of a minimum age in order to join. However, as you can imagine, most kids will lie about their ages. Of course, this should be warned against. As well, ensure that your child knows to never release any personal information over the internet no matter how friendly they may be with their fellow Fortnite players.
SOS 4 Kids offers online safety training for kids.
Our My Safe Life is designed for children aged 7 to 10. The personal safety program teaches kids many important life skills including online safety. Our instructors have actually heard kids in our courses have conversations about Fortnite. It has made us aware that many parents may be letting their kids play online games without knowing the risks.
To learn all about the My Safe Life program, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at 1-844-373-1024 or email us at [email protected]. You may also fill out the form on our Contact page!
