How to Keep Your Kids Safe on the Internet
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Are you wondering how to make the Internet safe for your kids? You want them to use the Internet for research, but you don’t want them to find objectionable sites or emails.
Perhaps you’d like to buy a solution that you can use on your computer that will not allow them to look at objectionable sites, yet will allow them to freely browse.
Here’s the bad news: filtering programs can’t do the job by themselves. NentNanny and other applications like it search for certain words in the Web site your child is clicking on. Simple words like “belly” can be targets for blocking, causing frustration, while research on “breast cancer” may be impossible.
But programs that look for words fail completely if the site has no objectionable words–only objectionable photos. My teenage son figured this out. He used Google Images to look for objectionable sites. He found them despite the fact that our filter, NetNanny, was turned on.
In fact, the filter program could never block these sites because it searches for words. It can’t evaluate pictures.
The next question is, “What’s a parent to do?”
*Put the computers the kids use where YOU are in your home. Then monitor what they are doing.
*Only the adults should know the login password. The kids will have to have permission to get on.
*Ensure that the kid logs off when the computer session is over, or turns the computer off. This makes the password required for the next session.
*Use filtering software. It may help.
*Make sure the kids know you will punish them if they are looking at objectionable sites. Visit their terminals at unpredictable times.
*Unplug the computer from the Internet if the child is using a word processor or other local program only.
*Give younger kids your own email address to use. This protects them from objectionable spam. Give teens an email address, but instruct them to give it out only to people they know personally.
Following these precautions will help you keep your kids safe, and will teach your teenagers good habits for avoiding temptations.
