I got top five lips to keep your child safe online. This video goes out to all you parents.
Number one, monitor reviews of email programs for programs such as MSN, AIM and Yahoo Messenger. Make sure you know who your child chats with and when they are chatting with those people. Make sure if they get to the chat room like at live.perillo.com, you know if they are getting into a private chat with others and make sure they know how to get off if someone makes them feel uncomfortable. It is very important. It is one of the reasons why we have a zero tolerance policy to a lot of things that should not happen in real life or on chat rooms. We are very responsible around here.
Number two, keep parental block turned on and block all sites that could harm your child or violate the privacy. Block pornographic sites. Sites like Myspace, Facebook etc. because people maybe able to find such personal information about them. If they do get on the site like Mysapace, monitor their friends’ list and look at all the pictures that they upload to make sure they do not give a stock on the perfect hunting photo. Also, make sure they are not adding inappropriate comments in their profile. If they are on youtube, be sure they do not upload any inappropriate videos on there and make sure they do not have dirty comments on there like “You are hot” or “hey hot” stuff. Well, it is important to both males and females and I know someone in there and I did not quite catch email, she is mentioning open dns.com, a great way to manage a lot of that stuff and block that stuff out right.
Number three, my parents - my mom specifically tried to do this kind of work. Limit time on the computer. If you limit the time your child is on the computer you can better monitor what is going on. Also if they spend less time on the computer, there is less time for them to get in trouble on there. Do not let them go on the computer with friends while you are gone because they may get in to way too much mischief. Also do not let your child spend time on the computer past their bedtime because it will interfere with their sleep.
Do not allow the computer to be turned on while they are doing their homework unless a computer is required to do it. And I got a couple more tips to draw in here but I think, really the bottom line is, as an adult, as a parent you have to maintain communication, open the lines of communication is important. You also have to be involved even if you do not know much about computers and technology that does not mean that your child does as well. They may know more, in fact they probably do but that does not mean that you should be less involved. That means you should have actually be more involved. I can tell you this and I am sure my child will hate me for this but you are doing right on it. I will be monitoring and I will let them know I will be monitoring and the checks will be random.
It is very open, very transparent. The whole piece is that I would guide them to make the right decisions. Certainly children these days are facing different factors, social factors, and economic factors, things that do online are different that what we did not have in online at all. It is kind of hard. I am sure some of your kids do imagine right now, bullying is a big part of it but hey I had a bully in high school and I was—thanks for telling me I rock. I do not rock that hard. But bullies are in real life, if it happens in real life, it can happen online.
Number four, keep the computer in a position where you will always be able to see it. So you will be able to see what is on the screen. Every now and then walk by the computer glance at the screen and see what they are typing or see if their internet is in Yahoo. If your child’s computer is located in a different room, then the one your computer is in, consider setting up a webcam so you can see what is going on the room the computer with your child is on.
Also always let your child knows what you are doing and if you are looking at their history so they do not feel you are invading their privacy. So again, transparency is important. You may go as far as you install some kind of key logger and I think a parent has every right to do that and to monitor on the things that the child is doing. As I said, the internet is different, it is just different. And like I said, I know I have got kids in this chat room right now. One of the reasons why I do my best to act my age, I am 22 years older than some people on the chat room. And that is my age. I am matured enough to handle and I have had this experience that was built up over time. But I know kids do not and you could just see that a lot of activity online. I can read something and tell you just about the age of the person who has written it or done something.
Now I am not saying that is a bad thing but over time, you get older, you get wiser and honestly, I cannot wait until I am 22 years older than what I am right now. Because I know I will be that much wiser. But that makes me older much more cautious and cognizant of people who are younger than me. And have had the same experiences and have not gained the maturity to handle some of the things that happen online, these tools that are online including places like youtube.
Number five, make up a contract for your child to sign. Tell them no other rules that are supposed to be followed while on the internet. If the contract is broken, punish your child but do not threaten to take the internet away from them. All that will do is just cause them to get mad and start to not like you. Punishment can be banning them from MS center, youtube for a few days or cutting the time on the computer short every night for a week. Just remember, do not take the internet away because some things the people have a part of their social life on the internet or may even want the internet to learn new things. You got to take the good with the bad.
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