The Internet could be considered a gateway to a brave new world for this millennium. To be successful in this world, you must have access to and knowledge of how to use the Internet. Children who can use the Internet will be better prepared for high school, college, and the job market.
Lawrence J. Magid of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children states that “millions of people now go online to exchange electronic mail (E-mail) and instant messages; participate in group chats; post and read newsgroup messages. , which are sometimes called bulletin boards; “surfing” the world wide web; and many other online activities. Children are no exception, in fact, they are more likely to be online than adults.” The Internet is a powerful educational learning tool that can also be extremely dangerous for children.
On Tuesday, June 20, 2006, the Austin American-Statesman reported that a teenage mother was suing MySpace.com for $30 million. The lawsuit filed in Travis County claims the popular Internet site fails to protect children from adult sexual predators. The lawsuit includes news of other assault cases in which girls were contacted through MySpace. The real question here is whether MySpace takes responsibility for your child’s safety or if that’s their job.
MySpace is not the only social networking website, just the largest with a membership of 70-80 million users, Bebo comes in second with a membership of 23 million users and other popular sites for teens include WeeWorld.com, Friendster.com, Tagged.com, Xanga. com and Orkut.com. An article published June 4, 2006 in Fairfield New Zealand Ltd., Stuff on, “Social Networking Websites Target NZ Teens in Turf Battle” by Kent Atkinson states that children turn to the Internet to hang out with friends, express their hopes and dreams and bare their souls with often painful honesty, mostly unbeknownst to their tech-foolish parents.
All of these incidents have occurred in the past few months. There are so many Internet safety features for parents to use that these incidents should not have occurred. You wouldn’t send your kid to play outside on a busy highway because it’s dangerous, well the internet is too. Parents will have to accept responsibility for monitoring their children’s Internet use. There are many tools to help both novice Internet users and experienced Internet users monitor their children.
PARENTAL CONTROL INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS
AOL Parental Controls
Monitor online activity with AOL® Guardian
Opt for AOL® Guardian “report cards” that show your child’s web browsing, email and instant messaging activity.
Limit your time online
Control how long your children are online. Set controls by day, time of day, or session length.
Approve email contacts
Help your kids communicate with their friends by creating a list of approved email addresses.
Manage settings away from home
Manage parental controls remotely through AOL.com. You don’t have to be there to monitor your children’s activity and Internet safety at AOL.
Limit access to other software as well
Prevent your children from viewing inappropriate web content in an external browser (such as Microsoft® Internet Explorer) and block other Internet applications outside of AOL.
Earthlink Parental Controls
Blocking and web filtering
Limit your child’s web browsing to EarthLink’s list of over 15,000 kid-friendly websites, or allow your children to visit all websites except the 3 million sites that EarthLink has blocked. You can also create your own lists of approved and blocked websites. Even if you or EarthLink don’t specifically block a site, Parental Controls can automatically check the language on all web pages your child visits and remove inappropriate language before displaying them. If the number of inappropriate words on a web page is excessive, Parental Controls blocks the site entirely.
cyber friends
Cyber friends are the people you allow your child to communicate with online. You create a list of approved friends (friends and family) so you don’t have to worry about strangers picking on your child. You can also define which features of CyberFriends Communicator (email, chat, bulletin boards, instant messaging, etc.) your child can use.
email filtering
If someone who isn’t a cyber friend sends your child an email, Parental Controls blocks that email so you can check it first. You can then unblock the message for your child to see, or simply delete it. Parental Controls also blocks email your child sends to people who aren’t CyberFriends; you can also unblock or delete those emails.
time limits
If you are concerned that your child is spending too much time online, you can restrict the hours per day, week, or month that your child can use the Internet.
SBC Yahoo Parental Controls
Parental controls to help you exercise control over the content your children can see on the Internet
AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Parental Controls
The software allows you to monitor your child’s time online, access to websites, email addresses, and more. It even sends out weekly report cards.
JUNO
Norton Parental Control Blocks access to websites and newsgroups that you deem unsuitable for children. It gives you the option to set different Internet access privileges for each person in your household and limit their browsing capabilities.
The list above represents ISP companies that specifically address parental controls. There are many Internet service providers that may have parental controls, check with your service provider to see if it is available to you.
SEARCH ENGINES WITH FILTERS
Google Safe Search
Many users prefer not to include adult sites in search results (especially if their children use the same computer). Google’s SafeSearch finds sites that contain sexually explicit content and removes them from search results. No filter is 100% accurate, but SafeSearch should remove most inappropriate material.
You can choose from three SafeSearch settings:
o Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google image search results, but does not filter normal web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; you will receive moderate filtering unless you change it.
o Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (ie both image search and normal web search).
o No filtering, as you’ve probably noticed, disables SafeSearch filtering completely.
yahoo! family account
yahoo! Family Account is a free account that allows you to control the information your child shares with Yahoo! and to maintain and monitor your account on an ongoing basis. With your Yahoo! Family account, you can:
or Create Yahoo! Identification for each child under the age of 13 in your family.
o Modify your child’s account information and other information stored on Yahoo!.
o Modify the Yahoo! of his son! Mail Block List and Yahoo! Friends list and ignore list of Messenger.
o Sign in as your child to modify any aspect of your account.
o Protect your child from accessing certain age-restricted areas of Yahoo!.
yahoo! Family Accounts also offers a set of resources to help your family learn to navigate the Internet safely.
search engines for kids
These search engines are designed specifically for children and have built-in filters.
YAHOOLIGANS http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/
PEACHPOD http://www.peachpod.com/
ASK FOR KIDS http://www.askforkids.com/
CLICK FOR KIDS http://www.kidsclick.org/
There is also software that will allow you to monitor the Internet sites your child visits.
o US Netizen http://www.usnetizen.com/parental-control.html provides a complete list of free software and software for sale.
The only way you can be sure that your child is safe on the Internet is to monitor your child’s activities. You should spend as much time reviewing and checking your child’s internet browsing as you would if you were teaching your child how to hit a baseball. Surfing the internet safely is a skill that you will have to teach your child, it will be a learning opportunity for you.
More information for parents http://www.911parenting.com