Our children are growing up in a digital world with many benefits. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of easily accessible bad stuff out there too, stuff that we want to protect our children from.

The digital world that our children grow up in offers them many valuable tools such as the Internet. However, in a world where anything can be copied, pasted, edited and forwarded, children need to understand that everything they do online leaves a digital trail that can be reworked and used against them. Fortunately there are various parental control measures that parents can use to help protect them.

Main issues of concern

    • Sexually explicit and violent material
    • Meeting strangers online
    • Sharing too much personal information
    • Cyber bullying
    • Exposure to vulgar language
    • Sites promoting inappropriate behaviours such as eating disorders and drug use
    • Email scams, downloading viruses, worms and Trojan horses, spyware and adware on your computers, tablets, etc.

It’s crucial that parents have an open, realistic, age-appropriate talk with their children in which they make them aware of the dangers lurking in cyberspace.

Talk the talk and walk the walk

    • Create computer usage rules. Use the age-appropriate safety pledges on, for example, the NetSmartz website at: http://www.netsmartz.org/Resources/Pledges.
    • Caution children not to reveal personal information such as their gender, age, address and location.
    • Help children create a password that can’t easily be hacked and remind them to keep their passwords secret.
    • Remind pre-teens and teens that the Internet is a public domain and whatever they write on weblogs or blogs (online diaries), say in chat rooms or on social network sites, or post via email can be used to harm or harass them.
    • Talk to pre-teens and teens about offensive or dangerous email, chat, or other communications, especially cyber bullying and sex talk by or to strangers. Teach them not to respond but to contact you immediately and not to delete the email as it can be used to track down the bully. They can also make use of the Microsoft Report Abuse link (microsoft.com/reportabuse) if you are not immediately available.
    • Point them to the CyberMentors site at http://archive.beatbullying.org/dox/what-we-do/cybermentors.html. Cyber mentors are young people aged 11 to 17 who mentor other young people on how to safely explore the Internet and report and handle both cyber and real world bullying.
    • Warn teens and pre-teens of the dangers of sexting; the exchange of sexually suggestive messages or images via cell phone. Some teens have committed suicide after being coerced or blackmailed into sexting. Emphasise the importance of talking to you about any threats they receive instead of trying to go it alone.
    • Warn them against meeting strangers online and agreeing to meet them in person. Paedophiles and other predators often target children, especially teens by pretending to be teens themselves.
    • Help your children use privacy settings to restrict who can access and post on their social networking profiles, blogs, and other accounts.
    • Urge them to be very careful when downloading applications, music, games or videos as it can open the way for viruses and other cyber spyware to gain access to their computers.
    • Place computers in a public area of the house where other family members walk past and may help monitor what children are watching and doing.
    • Protect all the computers in your home against Internet threats and scams by installing appropriate antivirus and antispyware software and keeping it updated. Contact Microsoft at microsoft.com/security/pypc.aspx, for more safety tips.
    • Internet accounts should be in the parent’s name and you should be in control of all the electronic and cyber devices in your home. Make sure you have the primary screen name and controlling passwords, and that you are in control of all the parental control software.

Parental control software

    • Windows and Mac OS X offer free, built-in safety features and parental control devices. These and other software programs and applications give parents very specific controls over what they allow their children to see and do in cyberspace.
    • Parental control software such as Net Nanny, WebWatcher and McAfee Safe Eyes, to name a few, can help you block harmful content and sharing of personal information, manage the sites children visit and their time online, monitor contacts and watch for behaviour like cyber bullying. Some can also monitor video and game usage and block specific desktop applications.
    • You can also set age-appropriate filters on your child’s mobile devices, tablets and iPads.

Children do not chose the time or culture they are born into. Fortunately, we as parents can shoulder some of the responsibility of protecting and teaching them how to live and function safely in the digital world they have inherited.

 

Sources

Advice on safety issues from our partners: retrieved from: https://www.google.com/intl/en/goodtoknow/familysafety/advice/
Four things you can do to help protect kids online. Retrieved from: http://www.microsoft.com/security/family-safety/childsafety-steps.aspx
Internet safety: what parents can do. Retrieved from: http://www.onetoughjob.org/safety/technology/internet-safetywhat-parents-can-do
Kids and the Internet: why parental controls aren’t enough. 2013. Retrieved from: http://safeandsavvy.f-secure.com/2013/11/07/kids-and-the-internet-why-parental-controls-arent-enough/#.U3R9INKSyE4
Parkinson, A. parental software review. Retrieved from: http://parental-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
Tweens and teens: practical advice to help keep young people safe online. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user%201/My%20Documents/Downloads/Protecting%20Tweens%20and%20Teens%20Online%20Brochure.pdf B
Widder, B. 2014. Best free parental control software. Retrieved from: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-free-parental-control-software/#!NFjbO