Now, more than ever, your role as a parent must involve your full attention when it comes to your child’s participation and time spent on the internet. Facebook, MySpace, instant messaging and other social networks all offer great experiences and fun ways to keep your child interacting with friends. However, there are many dangers in making the assumption that your child is always safe online and you need to become an active parent in this part of your child’s life.
ScottCounseling has heard from hundreds of parents who had to make their child use of the internet a discipline issue. Many parents share that their child become angry and even hostile when they are told that they will not be able to go online to meet socially with friends. The following article will help you, the parent strike a balance between appropriate internet safety and inappropriate online use by children.
Children And The Web: Striking The Right Balance With Internet Safety
by: James Druman
The internet now plays a huge role in our lives, and more so than we often know, in the lives of our children. Not only are internet connections typically found at school and at home but mobile technologies mean a growing number of kids even access the internet from places we would never have dreamed. While you may not satisfy your child's "need" for a smart phone, it doesn't mean their friend's parents don't.
With all this easy access to the worldwide web, children are exposed to an onslaught of potentially dangerous information and dangerous interactions with strange people you do not know. Most parents recognize this but feel powerless to do much about that—after all, we don't want to completely cut them off from internet use because, for all the dangers involved, there are also a lot of great benefits to modern communication tools.
So where do we strike the balance?
The first step in gaining some kind of control over how your children use this powerful communication device is, ironically, communication. We cannot completely control how or when our children use the internet, no matter how authoritative we try to become. Our number one step in "defense," if you will, is talking with our children about the dangers.
While completely monitoring every second your child spends online is a bit unreasonable, making rules about giving out personal details or talking with people they do not know is a little more realistic and possible to enforce. So talk with them and explain why the rules exist.
Another great set of tools in the concerned parent's arsenal are filtering programs. Most software designed to filter is set up with different accounts for different members of the family so that each person gets their own password for logging in. You can then set up a filter to make certain types of content off limits for certain users, and while the software is not perfect, it does a pretty good job.
You can also monitor the activity that has occurred on a computer using a certain account and go back later to see what children have been doing. While some parents may not feel comfortable doing this, it may be worth it, and often, just knowing their activities are possibly being scrutinized can be enough to make a child think twice before they view something they know is off-limits.
No matter what software you use, never underestimate the level of savvy children have with computer technology these days. If a child knows their stuff, it is completely possible for them to blast through filters and alter records so you never have a clue what they are doing. Let's face it, we snuck around our parents to listen to rock records or creep out to parties when we were kids, and in the virtual age, our children are bound to do the equivalent from time to time.
Yet another reason why it is much better to communicate with your child and teach them responsible web behavior rather than become the Internet Gestapo.
If you have reason to think your child is being targeted by online predators, which is, by far, the worst danger online, never let the issue go unreported. Keep in mind that even if your child did the right thing and dodged a potential danger thanks to what you have taught them, there are other innocent children out there to be victimized.
Always document any potential threats and report them to the police.
