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Education Homeschooling Internet Safety for Your Kids
| Internet Safety for Your Kids |
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| Written by Phyllis Wheeler |
| Thursday, 24 July 2008 20:19 |
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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. I bet you would like to find a program you could buy that you could install on your computer to block objectionable content, but permit research. I have sad news for you--there is no such perfect solution. There are solutions out there, such as NetNanny, that block any site mentioning one of a list of objectionable words. The result can be funny, such as blocking the word "arm," and at the same time can drive you nuts if you really want to do regular research on, say, breast cancer. But programs like this fail when trying to filter objectionable photo sites that have no objectionable words. So, how do I know this? I am sad to say that my teenage son enlightened me. Using Google Images, he searched for objectionable sites and found them, even though the filtering program was on. The problem is that filter programs search for individual words. They never look at pictures, and in fact cannot. So, what can you as a parent do? *Put the computers the kids use where YOU are in your home. Then monitor what they are doing. *To log on, anyone who is not an adult will have to ask an adult to input the password, giving permission in this way. *Require the child to log off when he is done. Now the password is required for the next session. *Use a filter like NetNanny. It will help when your back is turned. *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. If you take these measures and are watchful, you will help your teenagers withstand a temptation that is everywhere on the Internet, and get them into the habit of making good choices when sitting down to use the computer. About the Author: Phyllis Wheeler, the Computer Lady, offers this advice for parents. She also provides homeschool computer courses through MotherboardBooks.com, which has offered do-it-yourself computer science courses for kids and teens since 2003. Kindly provided by MoneyHunter.org You are welcome to use this article on your own website, if you include the link just before this text. |
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