It’s 2014 and if it isn’t obvious enough, the internet is everywhere and children are all over it as much as the next group.  At school, on mobile and especially at home, children are connected by game consoles, smartphones, educational software, email and on and on.  Unfortunately many studies cite an alarming frequency at which children are now accessing the internet completely unsupervised at some point in the day if not all the time.  As a parent myself, I can attest that it’s not as though we’ve decided to let it go, it’s more of a situation where the internet is so pervasive on almost every device and the thought of controlling all of it at all times can be overwhelming.

Parents are nonetheless concerned about content that is illicit, sexual, promotes drugs and more, not to mention things they hear about such as online predators and spyware.  Fortunately there are a number of basic recommendations that can help address these issues and you can do it as I have over spring break.  Time for a little spring cleaning.

First things first, communication – communication is key to all of this.  It means between parent and child.  Answer questions, and ask them as well.  If your child is a pre-teen or younger, run through these basic steps to help boost the protection of your child.

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1. Use your browser’s content filtering, keep it strict and add exceptions as required

2. Have a common home computer?  Set up a profile for each child in the house.

3. Talk about what sites the child is allowed to visit with them.  Do it together and set up bookmarks for them to use.  One mistype could lead them to somewhere on the net you don’t want them to be.

4. Time limits and hours of use – Establish these and stick to them, enforce them if you know how through your operating system.

5. Always have a good antivirus/anti-malware program installed, schedule it to run regularly.

6. You may want to think about things like YouTube, but once you allow it, it’s a safe bet to enable YouTube’s safe mode.  Do this for every browser.

7. While you’re at it, turn on Google’s Safe Search feature, on every browser.

8. Teach your child good online behavior.  Talk about cyber-bullying, let them know the internet is not anonymous and releasing information of their own or of someone else can have major consequences.

9. Speaking of online behavior, talk about scenarios with the child, what to do if they’re cyber-bullied, called names or threatened online.  Things can quickly escalate and get serious so it’s best just to report these things to parents and not respond.

10. Be sure to enforce technology rules, if they’re broken, then technology can and should be taken away.

Teens

If you’re a bit past that and dealing with teenagers, as you may already know, things have changed rather quickly.  They’ve picked up social media, texting and they are naturally curious about all kinds of topics.  All of the above still goes, but you need to make some other changes.

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1. Have a discussion about social media, and again talk about bullying, about public information.

2. For social media – disable all geo-tagging on devices and every available setting.  Review each application for optimal security settings, reveal as little as possible.

3. Teens will have a wider range of sites they will want to visit, everything from music to gossip.  Review these and talk about the sites often.

4. Not everyone will feel comfortable with this, but a vigilant parent will review internet history when appropriate and even do it regularly.  This means you need absolute access to the system and profile, including the teen’s personal system.

5. Encourage the teen to be honest, who are their friends and what they are doing.

6. Talk to the teen about rogue applications, they are typically loaded with some kind of malware or toolbar.  They often promise easy chat, easy friends or points.  Explain to them how these scams and malware act.

7. Gaming – Find out who they play with and discourage playing with strangers in online games.

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Those are some of the things you can do over spring break.  Get your systems in order and practice safe online behavior.

photo credit: zen via photopin cc