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How To Keep Your Kids Safe from the Internet's Sinkholes
How To Keep Your Kids Safe from the Internet's Sinkholes |
The Internet can deliver thousands of educational and activity-oriented Web sites to children, but some corners of the World Wide Web are as dirty and dangerous as the darkest corners of a remote subway stop.
Web sites featuring violence, pornography and predators abound. What's more, even the most well-intentioned child can be fooled into giving out personal and family information to marketing-driven sites that want to sell you everything from sneakers to snake oil to X-rated movies.
Indeed, a recent Annenberg Public Policy Center study found that more than one-third of the young people surveyed would chat about the kind of car their family drives, how much allowance they get, and whether mom and dad discuss politics - all in exchange for a small, usually worthless prize or trinket.
The big question: How can parents safeguard their children and their privacy, short of looking over their kids' shoulders every time they log on to the Internet? Here are a few suggestions:
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Tell your kids they should never give out their real names or other personal information about themselves or the family. Instruct your children that they should never, ever arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they've met online. Let your youngsters know that if they run into abusive, angry or vulgar language online, they should ignore it and immediately log off the Internet.
- Put your computer in the family room or another common area that the entire family frequents.
- Occasionally join your kids during their Internet forays to see the sites they're visiting.
Sometimes, however, even these measures may not be enough to adequately police your children's online activities. To that end, relatively inexpensive "filtering" software gives parents the power to keep kids from accessing offensive Web sites. Two programs that can be tested for free can be downloaded at Surfcontrol and Cybersitter.
Several "family-friendly" Internet service providers (ISPs) also offer blocked access for about $22 a month:
- America Online offers "striated" filtering. That is, parents can select levels of service crafted for young children, young teenagers or older teenagers.
- FamilyClick: Several, age-specific levels of access are offered, and no subscriber - including adults -- gets full access to the entire Internet.
- Integrity Online: Blocks sites featuring violence, sex, discriminatory material and other objectionable fare.
- Mayberry USA: The site's backers say its "exclusive filtering method blocks online pornography, pedophilia and hate groups at their source, preventing offensive online material from reaching [our subscribers]."
