Monitoring your kids’ internet activities

Here are more tips on how to make sure your children are protected from unwanted entities in the internet:

Keep your computer in the area of your house where there is more traffic – such as your living room. This way, your children will not be tempted to visit illicit and illegal sites as passing eyes can easily glimpse at what they are doing.

Establish internet surfing rules. Write down which sites are okay for visiting and which aren’t. Limit their computer use. For example, they can use the internet about 2 hours on schooldays for research and e-mail checking and maximum of 4 hours during weekends. You can even use more computer time as incentive for household chores if you wish. The deal here is that use of the internet should be a privilege that should be earned.

Make rules about contacts. They should learn that like in the real world, they should only talk to the people they know and they should ignore the strangers who come talking to them.

Talk with your children. Explain what the rules are for. If you just enforce them without them understanding, then they would only be tempted to break them. Help them understand your concerns.

Install child-safe software in your computer. These programs bans your web browser from accessing adult and unsafe websites.

Still even with safety programs, try to manually monitor your children’s internet use. One way is  by asking what homework is needed to be done for that day and such. You may even minimize ineternet use by teaching them good old-fashioned research. You can help them learn how to discern which resources are good and which aren’t by poring over books, magazines, journals, and newspapers. You not only teach them how to be good scholars, but they also will depend less on Wikipedia and other non-scholarly resources available online.