Kids and Internet Safety (Pre-teens especially)
We recently bought a new laptop and got hi-speed internet after not having it for a few years...I decided it was a good time to revisit some internet guidelines with my daughter as her interests in the internet have changed drastically in the past few years. She enjoys surfing the web, instant messaging, social networking, and research for homework/school projects, all of which are VERY closely monitored. I keep the laptop in the living room so that I can see what she is doing at all times. One rule we have is that she has to ask to go on the internet, that way I know exactly when she is going to be on...we then determine a time limit together. Typically she is on 1/2 hour a night...of course if it is homework related than it may require more time. I found a great website http://safekids.com/ for pre-teens on internet safety. There is a great "family" contract to go over with your kids together. Here are some other great topics on the website:
Child Safety on the Information Highway
Video & Audio Slide Shows
Kids Rules for Online Safety (for pre-teens)
Safe Socializing Tips for Teens
Guidelines for Parents of Preteens
Family Contract for Online Safety
Chat Room Safety
Think Safety When Posting Online Video
Protecting your family’s privacy
Check out the video below...it has a good message.
posted by Michele at
10:48 AM
3 Comments:
This is a really good message too.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seOQyMvG99w I saw this commercial a couple of days ago, and it made me think about how bad 7th grade was for me..... it would be way worse now cause kids can send mean messages by texting!
It's good to see you have a solid relationship with your daughter. That is more than many parents have... Although, she is still young. Wait till she's a teen! :)
Seriously though, I have teens and I monitor everything they do with software. One too many lies, and way too many IMs and IE pages being X'd out of when I walk into the room (we have a study/PC room that is fairly open and in view). Started using PC Pandora and haven't looked back. I even let them know that I can see everything they do on the PC, I just didnt tell them how. Ha!
You have done a great job of making your daughter more aware of online safety. Web of Trust (full disclosure; my employer) is another tool that can help parents and kids more aware of their surfing environment. The tiny traffic light style icons that appear next to the link after you search on Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, etc, alerts you about that site—green for go, yellow for caution and red for beware. The protection level can be customized to suit an individual’s way of surfing the Internet.
The ratings are based on standards of trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. WOT gets it site reputation data from its community users and sources such as listings of phishing sites and spam blacklists.
What I like about it is that it’s people-driven, so I benefit from other people’s experience and knowledge. WOT has information on 17.5 million websites, and is continually growing and improving. Version 3 is slated to come out soon with more features. It’s a free download and it works with IE and Firefox.
Check out WOT Web of Trust
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