Watch: Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres on the Right Age for a Kid’s First Phone

In this Living in Naperville clip, host Dan Firks asks Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres for his top online safety advice for families. Chief Arres says the exact age matters less than being deliberate about the decision and locking the phone down once it’s handed over, and he singles out in-game chat on Roblox, Cookie Run Kingdoms, and similar apps as a place where adults posing as kids try to reach children directly.

Read the full guide to online safety for kids in Naperville →

Video Transcript

Dan Firks: Chief, tell me, there are a lot of families here in Naperville, a lot of kids. What would you recommend for online safety for children?

Chief Arres: Don’t give cell phones to your kids.

Dan Firks: Okay.

Chief Arres: All right, so we’re going to get past that, because that’s always my first answer. Be very deliberate about what age you decide it’s okay to give your children that device. Now the next part is: make sure you lock it down, because kids are kids, and kids are still formulating what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s bad. They shouldn’t have the freedoms that come with a cellular phone. So I’ll give you some tips that even my own kids have to follow: there’s no chatting in these online games that they like to play. Even simple kids’ games, the Roblox of the world or Cookie Run Kingdoms, all of these games have chats in them. There’s zero reason to let your kids chat with people in this software, because there could be people impersonating a kid who are actually 50, 60, 70 years old. I guess the age doesn’t matter. The point is, you could have adults in these chat rooms trying to convince kids to do improper things.

Read the full guide to online safety for kids in Naperville →