Computers are a fact of life today and keeping our children safe on the Internet is a fact of parenting. For many parents who didn’t grow up with the World Wide Web at their fingertips, the notion that their child needs to use the internet for everything from homework and research projects to gaming and socializing is a daunting one. After all, no one wants their little one stumbling on something they shouldn’t see while online. Another fact is, that most children don’t tell their parents about anything controversial or sex related they have found in the Internet. What should be even more concerning, they don’t even tell about suspicious people they meet on social media websites. Such contacts can have really bad endings. The Internet is full of various kinds of sexual predators and pedophiles, so it is our duty to protect our kids from such disgusting people.
Awareness is the key
Responsible parents should always take care of their children, both in their online and offline activities. Our children need to be taught that things that happen online can very often bring about positive or negative results in the real world. It is our responsibility to do everything to protect our children from any harm and to protect themselves when we cannot be there.
- Teach your children what is acceptable for your family to watch online and what is not.
- Teach them how to use privacy settings on various websites, most notably social networks, to protect their personal information.
- Make them aware of the dangers of strangers lurking on the Internet, many of whom might be simply criminals and thieves.
- Explain that on websites with content containing porn or brutal violence there may also be malicious programs and viruses which might seriously damage the computer they are using.
Help yourself with good software
Conversation is essential, but very often it is not enough. Another means of protecting them is to equip our technology with parental monitoring software, which is widely available in many versions for many different types of technology. Such programs can be a very useful tool since it allows you to have complete control over any online and offline activity on your computer.
You can put certain websites on blacklists so they will not be available to enter. And not only websites, you can even block programs and games! That should be relieving news for those parents, who are concerned about how much time their kids waste on playing video games or endlessly hanging out on chat rooms. Last but not least, you can set time limits on how long the computer or the Internet can be used through parental control settings. This feature – along with blacklists – is often used in many internet cafe, companies and public facilities, like libraries.
Summary
Summarizing, there is a lot to do when we want to be sure that our children are safe while browsing the Internet. But we are certainly not helpless in this endeavor. The most important thing should be awareness. Telling our kids that there are both positive and negative sides of the Internet should be the first step and combining this with using parental monitoring software should make us feel safe about our children’s online activity.
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About the Author: PCWebControl parental monitoring software is widely used in many households, companies and public facilities.
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