How do you keep your kids safe from disturbing live video on social media?

A series of disturbing videos recently posted to social media showing brutal attacks — or even outright murders — raises questions about what parents can do to keep their kids safe online.

This week, two videos were posted to Facebook that showed a woman being attacked. The videos have been linked to a homicide and Sagkeeng First Nation Chief Derrick Henderson has called on Facebook to delete them.

On Tuesday, a Thai man uploaded live video of himself killing his 11-month-old daughter on Facebook before taking his own life, and in another chilling incident a man posted video to Facebook of him killing a 74-year-old retiree.

Matthew Johnson, director of education at digital and media literacy group MediaSmarts, gave CBC's Information Radio tips for parents hoping to reduce the risk of their children involuntarily viewing disturbing footage on social media.

What's the starting point for protecting kids?

There are really two different approaches we can take and both of them complement each other.

The first is to use the tools that different platforms have available to limit exposure to disturbing content. On Facebook, for instance, you can make it so that videos don't autoplay. That is available on most social networks.

You can also limit whether or not you get notifications about live videos. So there are a lot of different technical tools you can take to limit that exposure.

What if your kids see something disturbing on social media?

It's also really important that as soon as our kids start using the internet, we explain to them how easy it is to come across something they're not ready for or not looking for, and that they should come to you as a parent when that happens.

What we do know from our own research at MediaSmarts is that kids do turn to parents. In fact, just about three-quarters of the students we surveyed said parents were the first people they would turn to when they encountered something like a photo or video that made them feel uncomfortable, or if somebody posted something hurtful about them.

But they also need to know that they can trust you not to overreact and particularly not cut off their access to the internet.

How do you manage peer-pressure to view this kind of content?

It's important for kids to know that every witness to an act of violence or an act of bullying is a part of that event, even if you're witnessing it after it happened. And we have a responsibility to act accordingly. At the very least, it means not re-victimizing people by viewing a video of them being victimized.

And when possible, it means taking steps to help in some way. We have a lot of tools for young people, parents and teachers on our website aimed at helping kids take more positive steps as witnesses.

How good are social networks at policing this problem?

I think it's a long-running problem that goes back to the earliest days of online video.

I think they're getting better about taking it down and certainly all of them have pretty robust reporting tools for when you see something, and that's certainly something that we should be doing when we see something like this.

Live video is the thing right now and it's a very hard nut to crack, because it's very difficult to prevent something from being broadcast live.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.