Making Your Kids Safe Online
The coming of the Internet has been a revolution. It has changed
the way we do almost everything, from communication to shopping
or learning. As long as you know where to look, one can find
virtually anything online. But this hasn't come without its
share of dangers. There is about as much good as evil on the
Internet, and kids are mostly at the receiving end. A large
chunk of stuff on the Internet isn't suitable for kids or even
teenagers. There are predators on the Internet whose mission is
to lure teenagers away from home for evil reasons. Keeping kids
safe online is a problem that never stops disturbing the mind of
the over busy and overworked modern day parents.
In a bid to keep children safe online, parents have had to
resort to several means of parental control. A lot of parents
restrict their kids' time online, some use filters and other
technologies to block potentially harmful content from their
home computers, while others have resorted to some sort of
parental control software that monitors kids' online behavior.
What most parents, knowingly or unknowingly, miss out is the
importance of educating their kids to the dangers inherent in
the Internet. Thinking about what happens when a toddler plays
with a knife would give us a clue. Ordinarily, you would try
explaining to the kid why the knife is not a plaything. What is
wrong, therefore with explaining to your much older boy/girl,
why certain websites or certain online habits are wrong. If you
are prohibiting your kid from something, he has got to know why,
or the adventurous spirit in the teenager will someday push him
to see what you are preventing him from seeing.
The bottom line is education. Let your kids know why those
'sleazy' sites are 'out of bounds'. Let them know it is wrong to
follow up with those luring chat-friends they make online and
the dangers of giving out the house address or phone numbers to
'phoney' online friends. Tell your kids you are not only worried
about them, but also about the computer. With this, you will not
only be lecturing your kid, you will also be imbuing information
security culture in him.
Those Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses and the rest are
not completely new to your kids. They know about these dangers
to the computer. You only have to reinforce this to them and put
it in practical terms. If your kid doesn't know anything about
these dangers, it's your duty to teach him and if you don't
know, yourself, find out. All the information you need is out
there, you only need to research.
Remember that if you have to resort to the use of some of those
parental monitoring software programs that records everything
your kid does online; you may need to rethink your decision. If
what you want to achieve is for your kid to obey rules, this
software will probably be no good. What the software achieves is
catching your child 'in the act'; this is more of a last resort,
when all other means have failed. Is that what you are saying?
The point still remains that, the more informed you get your
kids to be about online dangers, the safer their online
experiences will be. Those filtering technologies may achieve
something close to this, since they inhibit potentially harmful
content from getting through to your computer, but what about if
your kid has to access the Internet from a friend's place where
such devices are not installed?
Make your kids safer online, let them know where and what to
stay away from, and why. If you don't know, find out. A simple
search will get you tons of information.