From talking to a few different parents, some of them are very strict with their children using the computer, and some are not. Some parents allow a computer in the child's bed room; some parents prefer having the computer in an open area like the living room or dining room.
There is no right or wrong answer. It all depends on how much you trust your children. Some parents are afraid that their children can go to "unsafe" sites by accident, or by searching for something on the Internet. Another belief is that the child knows more than they do and they are afraid of what their child is not telling them.
They are going to find these "unsafe" sites whether the computer is in an open area, or in a bed room. It is what your child does after they go to these sites that really matters.
There are security levels you can put on the web browser to help limit what sites your child can access. Microsoft Vista does a better job than Windows XP at this, but sooner or later everyone is going to discover sites that they found by accident.
The first thing that parents should do is to create their account on the child's computer with a password that your child cannot guess. You want to create an account and assign the highest control on the computer.
This account is called the Administrator account, and you can look at what your child is doing online and offline. You will be able to see what files they downloaded, what documents they have on their computer and where they go online.
The next thing to do is to setup an account for each child in the family if the computer will be used by more than one child. You can limit what the child can do. There are different types of users identified through Windows and they are:
Chat Room and Instant Messenger (IM)
I do not know of any kids on line that do not have an AOL Instant Messenger account. The majority of time it is probably harmless and a great way for the kids to communicate. There has been many times that my younger daughter forgot to bring a homework assignments home and vice versa. Typing in the assignments, especially if they are spelling words or questions is a lot better than talking to someone on the phone and having to hand write the information.
In a nutshell, the kid's
· Should not use their real name
· Never give out personal information, including local schools and surrounding businesses.
· Only have their friends in the buddy list.
· Never send and receive files, mainly because of virus and inappropriate pictures and language.
· Never agree to meet someone online.
· If a message is inappropriate, delete it and delete the person from your list.
You have to build a trust with your kid on line. There are monitoring software programs out there, but you also have to audit your kid's activities. When my daughter was 12 she had some names in her AOL Instant Messenger that I did not recognize.
When I questioned her she said they were just friends. Later that day I went into her account and started looking up the people. There was one person who said they were 12 years old. Looking further I saw that he was a 22 year old male living in north east Philadelphia. This person also had a porn site.
After that my daughter got rid of all of the acquaintances she had and only kept her closest friends in the discussion group.
Talk to your kids and have them report suspicious activity. A recent survey showed that 42% of the parents do not know what their kids are doing online and at least 28% of the friends they associate with are strangers. GET involved.
Monitoring Software
There are pros and cons with buying monitoring software. As your kids grow older you may want to adjust the settings if you buy a monitoring package.
For example, my mother died when my daughter was fourteen. I had a monitoring software application installed. She wanted to look at my mother's life. My mother was in a working concentration camp during World War II and my daughter tried to do research on the Holocaust. Because the Holocaust dealt with death, dying, sex, and violence she could not do research.
The software also limits search engine access because somewhere on their sites are the topics mentioned above. As you child gets older, they will need the computer to do research, homework and access to their schools site. Some monitoring software limit what you child can search for, or what sites they will display.
Where are your children going online?
Internet Explorer and FireFox keep track of the sites that are visited. Internet Explorer keeps a month's worth of history. You can go into Internet Explorer and click on Favorites and select History. You will see the current week, last week, 2 weeks ago, and three weeks ago. Every site that your child visited will be displayed.
