Protecting Your Children on the Internet

I meet a lot of people from different walks of life on a regular basis. I am routinely asked by parents what they can do to their home computers to make sure their kids are safe. As you can imagine this is a very broad and open ended topic at best.

There are in fact some technical things that you can do to help protect them, but the answer has little to do with technology in my humble opinion. The answer is a combination of technology and good parenting.

First let's cover the obvious technical controls. All of my comments need to be taken into consideration based upon the age and history of the child. For example, controls that you might implement for a six year old may need to be different for you 16 year old. Also, even if you do in fact have the single best child in the world, they are no match for a sick minded adult that possess exponential power and intellect over them. They can be tricked and this is a parents worst nightmare. Teenages in particular inherently pull away from their parents--even the best kids in the world think their parents are dumb and have no idea what they are going through.

A simple search on a seemingly innocent topic can reveal some pretty horrible results for your child. How do you stop this? There are a number of screening programs on the market that can help with this. If you do a search on parental controls or internet filters you will get a list of possible options. PC Magazine has rated Net Nanny the top choice for a few years running now. There are other options out there, but you won't be disappointed with this choice. They have a free trial for 14 days at the time of this article. Ge the scoop on the full list of features here.

Another area of major concern is online gaming (i.e., Xbox 360 Live, etc). Now your child can play online with anyone from around the world or down the block. They can talk and chat in real-time with one another. This is a nightmare to try and secure because there is no reasonable control to help protect your child in this area short of you being directly involved.

Now that the basic technical control is out of the way we need to cover the most important controls to help protect your child. That control is you. There is no replacement for good parenting and being actively involved.

Here are a few pointers that should help in addition to using a technology control such as Net Nanny.

• Don't let your children use the computer in a room alone (i.e., bedroom, etc).
• Have an open relationship and set the expectation that you must always know their passwords and that you can and will monitor their actions and communications.
• History review is very important with cell phones and texting. Most of the communication providers offer varying levels of parental controls. Also this is an emerging space where more soltuions are being offered as well.
  
• Make sure history is enabled on their web browser and IM programs. You can then follow up and review where they have been and what they were talking about in combination with a screening program like Net Nanny.
  
• Limit the amount of recreation time on the computer and online gaming systems. What ever happened to playing baseball till dark with the other kids in the neighborhood?
  
• Read the rating label on the PC or Game System package and pay attention!
  
• If your child is allowed to play an online game, never leave them alone in the room! If you do--that is the equivalent of dropping them off in a foreign country and letting them run wild.
  

Last, but not least, maintain a healthy and open realtionship with your child and all of the hard work and good lessons that you inherently teach on a daily basis should work in everyones favor the majority of the time. The fact is that the world is a scary place and there are limitations and there are many factors that go into protecting your children. I hope that you found this information helpful and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Tim