Security Company Symmantec has claimed in one of its recent studies that:
--Kids 7 And Under Regularly Search For Porn on internet.
-- porn was the fourth most popular search term for children seven years and under, behind YouTube, but ahead of sites such as Disney or Nickelodeon.
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Even if the claims seem very illogical and thus hard to believe(for obvious reasons); One thing is for certain, when it comes to web, kids (tweens and teenagers both) do need to be supervised and their internet usage behaviour does needs to be closely monitored. This role assumes even more gravity when another recent study claims that even not so bright kids can easily search porn on Web.
So parents need to take the supervision and monitoring task quite seriously. In fastly evolving times we live in, this task also needs to be included under good parenting manual.
Below are the things that you as a parent can do to shield your child from the bad side of the internet and help them explore the good side of the web:
1. Always let your kid use internet in your supervision.
2. Help kid explore the beneficial side of the web. Beneficial doesn’t mean anything good or informative. The information should conform to the age of the child. The idea is not make the kid, excessively information hungry.
3. Teach the kid only those skills which you think the kid will not misuse in your absence.
4. Incorpaorate discipline to your child’s web usage. Like that number of hours a day, at this time of the day etc.
5. As a parent try to learn advanced PC and internet skills. This will include, putting filters to block adult and maleovalent content.
6. On home PC (which is used for internet surfing), be administrator yourself and give the kids, limited access accounts. That way you can have a better control.
7. If the school your kid goes has internet in the curriculum, make sure they have adequate arrangement in place to block porn, bad and other maleovalent content.
8. Don’t educate your kid with something which is not conforming to his/her age. Educate at the right age.
9. Regularly check the web usage history, to see whether the kid is conforming to the rules that you made.
10. If your works keeps you out for long hours; making you unable to supervise your kid personally; or you are not that tech savvy; you can regulate your child’s web usage with the help of Parental control softwares like Family Cyber Alert Parental Control and Keylogger
etc.
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