Today is Safer Internet Day. Andy Phippen writes about how the internet has changed lives.

Sometimes we can panic as a result of high profile media about the harm that can result from being online and certainly – as with any environment – the internet does present some dangers.

However, for the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, the internet offers wonderful opportunities for communication, learning and social interaction.

I had to spend some time teaching in Sri Lanka last year so had to spend some time away from the family.

Every day I spoke to, and saw, my children on Skype and they saw what I was up to as I posted photographs into a dropbox for them to access.

This was done with thousands of miles between us and cost nothing more than the price of an internet connection from my hotel.

While we are becoming somewhat used to the miracles of the internet, this heightened level of global communication is still amazing.

Online technology has undoubtedly changed the way we interact and made the world a much smaller place.

When I get up in the morning I check my email, read the BBC news and look at Facebook and Twitter.

In less than ten minutes I can find out what friends, family, colleagues and students are up to and connect with people in response to their activities.

In young people's terms, I would estimate I am a bit of a Facebook loner in that I only have 313 friends to inform me of their daily news.

But even with this "small" group of friends it would be impossible to know what each of them were up to without these technologies.

While there are concerns about whether all of these online interactions are detracting from "real world" interactions, in a lot of cases they are complimenting offline relationships and allowing people to stay in touch in ways that not possible in the offline world.

I know there was concern last week about the amount of time young people are spending on mobile devices and whether this permanent online culture is leading them into a spiral of lack of sleep and poor performance at school or in the workplace.

But can the blame for this really be levelled at technology?

I know when I was growing up that while I was one of the privileged few among my peers who was allowed a TV in their bedroom, my parents made a very clear rule I was not allowed to watch it after 10pm.

If I broke that rule, then the next day, no TV. Sometimes the fundamentals of good parenting seem to be lost among this world of jargon and electronic devices.

In a report to be released by the London School of Economics for Safer Internet Day, a clear message is that parents should be positively engaging with their children and the internet, rather than restricting their access as a way to "protect" them.

In my many conversations with young people, something that often comes up is they feel their parents are not interested in their online lives.

By talking to our children about what they do online we can show we are interested, we value it, and we will be there for them if things do go wrong. What is clear is that not engaging with what children do online, will not stop them doing it, they will just do it without telling us.

We have a lot to learn from conversations with young people about how they use technology.

A lot of them are unquestionably aware of many of the risks and have developed strategies to deal with issues that might arise.

However, if parents do not take part in the conversation, these strategies will not include them.

Safer Internet Day is an annual event which those of us involved in the online world use as a focal point to raise awareness around the safe use of technologies such as mobile phones, gaming platforms and the World Wide Web. Support for the day is always far reaching and this year, multi-national organisations including the BBC, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many others are taking part.

But this year's theme for Safer Internet Day, in light of the many surveys doing the rounds at the moment, is especially timely.

In a departure from many of the previous events, the focus is very much on safe use of the internet through positive engagement.

It is all about seeing how different generations can benefit from being online together, and is being coordinated under the banner of "Discovering the digital world together safely".

Personally, I would encourage all parents – and grandparents for that matter – to view this year's Safer Internet Day as a time to learn more about safe use of internet technologies, and have conversations with young people about the sort of things they do. Be open, ask questions and set ground rules. If you do, we might end up with generations learning from each other and getting even more benefit from these amazing communication technologies we have at our fingertips.