Parental Control Software

This weekend at the big family BBQ, some cousins came who I haven't seen in years. It was amazing to see that the boys were now 17 and 13. Really nice kids who seem to have their stuff together. At one point, I let them know that downstairs we have a Wii, PS2, XBOX and 100 games for them to play if they wanted. They went downstairs with the rest of the boys to play. At that time, but my brother-in-law said to their father. Sure, go ahead and melt your brains, in a very jokingly way. It was that at that point, my cousin said something that made perfect sense to me in this day and age. He said, "You know, they could be going out drinking or doing drugs with their friends at this age. Instead, they are at home safe playing video games with their friends." Although maybe no ideal, I really like this better than the latter which seems to be happening more and more. It got me thinking about teens and computer use.

My son will be 12 in October and already knows enough about the internet to be dangerous. He doesn't chat online. He emails his friends occasionally. For the most part, he is doing some homework research, and playing games. You Tube is starting to pick these days too.

For some reason, I am really comfortable about him and computer use. I haven't installed any of that parental control software. Personally I think it's worthless. Having tracked hackers for a few years at previous jobs, I know for a fact that predators and hackers are one step ahead. The parental control software is pretty much to keep the stupid people from getting to your kids. That's fine and dandy, but the stupid people wouldn't be able to carry a conversation with your kids anyway, so they wouldn't get through. So why do people purchase this type of software?

Parents purchase control software for their own piece of mind. I think that it's a lazy way out. Not saying that there parents are lazy, because it's quite the opposite. They care quite a bit, but they just don't know or take the time to know enough about the internet in order to protect their child. As a parent, I feel that if anyone in your family uses the internet, it is your duty to become an expert.

You need to be able to learn how to search Google and search well. There is much more to just typing in a word. There are different phrases and parameters that narrow your search to exactly what you want. Find out what sites people are going to. Go to Alexa and find out what the top 100 sites are. Visit them and see what they are about. You could probably throw out the shopping sites, but check the social networking sites closely. Visit some pages to see what kids are doing and saying. You will be amazed. Check out YouTube and other video sites to see what kids are recording and posting. Once again, you will be amazed. Figure out how chat programs work. Get an ID yourself and Chat/IM with your kids. Go to the celebrity gossip sites. After you puke, understand who your children are using as role models. You need to be hip with the young folk. So what does this do for you to help protect your child? Nothing by itself but with the most basic of things, it becomes the most important thing you will ever do.

Plain and Simple. You should not let your child have a computer in their room. Especially one that is connected to the internet. Their computer should be in a public location in the house. A place where there is heavy traffic and where you hang out. This serves multiple purposes. The first being that if anything wrong pops up or happens on the computer, you will be able to see it out of the corner of your eye and ask a question. You will have been familiar of this stuff from your research that you've done. Secondly and very important is that if your child/teen is doing homework and needs to search something. You will have all the knowledge they need to help them with the search. Teach them a few things and then you can pretend to know more than they do on the computer. That prevents them from trying to pull one over on you in "Their Own Turf"

So my take on how to raise computer safe kids, do the following:
1. Learn everything about the internet. No exception here!
2. Put your computer in a public place. School Laptops should have tracking software on them, but only allow use in a public place where you can view stuff out of the corner of your eyes.
3. Offer help on doing research via the internet. Show your child a few things or two. They will be amazed and realize that you aren't so oblivious.
4. Parental Control Software. Although I bashed it up above, it's not entirely a bad idea. Anything helps, I just think that it's highly overrated.