The Auburn Valley YMCA is teaming up with Google to host a workshop for parents to help teach families about online safety and digital citizenship.

Google’s Be Internet Awesome (BIA) program – designed to help families create healthy digital habits with the Family Link app – runs from 10 to 11 a.m. Saturday, June 29 at the Y, 1620 Perimeter Road. The workshop is free.

The workshop coincides with June’s National Internet Safety Month and comes at the start of the school summer holidays when screen time use typically surges and parents seek ways to best protect their children from unscrupulous online activity.

“As the Internet and technology become more and more ingrained in our daily lives, making sure that families are equipped with the necessary tools to establish safe and healthy online habits is crucial,” said Wendy Bart, chief membership and health officer for the YMCA of Greater Seattle. “Google’s Be Internet Awesome program empowers families to have conversations at home about being online with helpful information and we feel strongly that these resources need to reach our communities. We are honored to be partnering with Google.”

The one-hour workshops will focus on Be Internet Awesome’s “Internet Code of Awesome” – be smart, alert, strong, kind and brave. Families will learn to teach their children how to communicate responsibly, understand real from fake in the face of phishing and scams, build strong passwords, be positive and kind online, talk about questionable content with their family, and why building healthy tech habits is important.

The workshops will give parents access to free bilingual resources, answers to questions about online safety and digital citizenship, and information to help facilitate discussions at home.

Learn more at yBIA.org.