The entire worry over tech addiction is unique to this generation of parents and has snuck up on us like a high speed train – leaving us dazed and confused, particularly about Internet safety for kids. However, our collective spider sense is tingling and we need to start listening to our gut. If it feels like your kids are spending too much time online… then they probably are.
Here are 7 ways to start playing a more active role in managing Internet safety for kids:
1. Be Honest About What Kind of Digital Parent You Really Are
When it comes to thinking about tech-addiction as it pertains to your children, which of the following best describes you:
- Ignorant of the problem
- In denial of the problem
- Apathetic to the problem
- Concerned about the problem
Life is crazy busy for most of us, but as parents we need to find the time to be mindful about our kids’ tech media consumption. Learn more about this phenomenon and why a growing number of people – from doctors, psychologists, sociologists, and educators, to journalists, computer scientists, philosophers, and (most importantly) parents – are becoming deeply concerned over the potential for significant long-term negative side effects for the iGeneration.
Read more about health concerns surrounding wireless devices
2. Assess Your Home Internet Domain
If you are going to wrap your arms around this issue you first need to understand that there are 2 different Internet domains in your home to manage:
- the home broadband network – provided by your Internet service provider (ISP) through the router in your house, and where you get your WiFi connection from when you are at home
- the mobile network – provided by your cellular provider through the cell towers in your neighborhood, and where your mobile phone gets its data plan connectivity from
Managing your child’s online activities effectively – especially for tweens and teens that have their own mobile phones – requires a plan for dealing with both of these Internet domains. If you only manage one, the child can easily switch to the other since today’s smart phones support connections on both kinds of network.
3. Take Back Control Over Your Home Networks
The next step is to take back control over how it is used. Therefore, you want to find an Internet Parental Controls solution that works for both of these networks.
For your home broadband network you want to stay away from a parental control solution that is device-centric. Kids today have too many personal WiFi-enabled devices to go online with from any room in the house, including laptops, game consoles, iPods, iPads and tablets, eBook readers, TVs, and mobile phones. If the parental control solution you are looking at requires you to “download software” then stay clear as it won’t scale with the number of devices in the house.
Instead look for a parental control solution that works with your router, through which all home broadband wifi connections go through to access the Internet. Having a single point of access to “choke” is infinitely easier to manage then dealing with all of those disparate devices – most of which our kids know more about then we do.
The WebCurfew.com service is a website that provides a free, parent-friendly way to manage the internet connectivity of ALL of the devices connect to your home router, as easily as you would your living room light switch. Simply visit the WebCurfew.com website and tell it the make and model of the router you already have in your home, and if it is one of the dozens of routers WebCurfew supports as of this writing, you can see and control them all from an easy to use, personalized Control Panel webpage. No software to download, or devices to deal with.
To control the devices on your mobile network you need to look at a solution that your cellular provider offers. Visit their website or call up their customer support and tell them you are looking for parental controls for your son or daughter's mobile phone.
4. Put limits on where they go online
To control where your kids go when they are online you need a web content filtering strategy. This, once again, must be instigated separately on the two different networks in your home internet domain.
For the home broadband network, you can use available free web content filtering services such as those that come with WebCurfew or with OpenDNS. These services allow you to select from a litany of broad categories of internet content such as ‘Pornography’, ‘Gaming’ or ‘Social Networking’ and block all content pertaining to them.
With respect to mobile phones in your home, you will once again have to speak to your cellular provider to understand the features they offer in this area.
5. Put limits on when they go online
It is very important to limit the total time children spend online regardless of their age. For this you will want to restrict the times at which your children’s devices have access to the internet.
For the home broadband network you should do this via your router – either directly using the built in (albeit technical) parental controls and/or firewall settings of your router, or more simply with the WebCurfew service. Choose the times when your children are allowed to go online and be sure to be consistent. For example, consider making it the norm in your home that kids can go online in the evening after dinner and homework for a set amount of time, but that all internet is shut off a half an hour before bed to allow time for book reading.
Similarly use the Internet Parental controls provided by your cellular provider to limit when their mobile phone data plans are available, thereby ensuring they have no way to “go online” unless you wish to allow it.
Read more about how blue light from computer screens can hinder sleep
6. Set Clear Expectations
Before you give your 12 year-old a shiny new internet-enabled device, consider having them sign your own version of an ‘iRules Contract’. This is a great way to establish your expectations around appropriate technology use, as well as clearly set out the consequences when they inevitably slip up. It’s also a great away to broach the subject of parental controls as general parenting strategy with your child.
7. Learn to Trust Your Children
There is another entire category of parent control solutions, best described as “surveillance tools” that allow you to spy or otherwise keep tabs on your children without them knowing it – at least initially. Consider carefully the message you are sending to your child if you use these tools to keep track of what they type in text messages or post on-line, what pictures they take, what games they play, or where they go with their phones.
While it is important to be a part of their digital lives, it is also important to have mutual respect in the parent-child relationship. If you are crystal clear on your expectations of them as digital citizens while providing responsible boundaries, then you make it easier for them to succeed.
Parenting in the internet age doesn’t have to be hard. By taking back control of your home internet domain, putting responsible limits in place, setting clear expectations and consequences and enforcing those limits by implementing a ‘web curfew’ with great free resources like WebCurfew, you can raise children that use the internet in a balanced and responsible way.
Read more about how to protect yourself from your cell phone
Written by Rod da Silva, WebCurfew Founder & CEO.
Image via Andrew_Writer
