Yesterday, Sally from tots100 had posted a couple of questions on a Facebook group regarding online safety: do we use specific software or restrictions; is there anything we would like to know about how to keep kids safe online; and anything we wish the industry would do to make parents’ lives easier?
My son was given an old computer by my sister two years ago when he was 3 year old. My husband was very concerned about online safety and researched about it. We trialled the free Windows Live Family Safety and opted to use restricting access for our child that because we found it easier to use.
The limitations that we imposed with this program caused a lot of frustration with my son. He was unable to visit some of the children’s gaming websites and unable to watch online shows. Of course, he is able to request access to the website and we get email notifications through my husband email address. My husband does get a lot of notification emails and he had to set up an email rule to manage it. Once Mr C has the time to check out the website, he can grant access quite easily.
This is a great free tool from Windows but is relatively light compared to more comprehensive paid tools software. Many paid software tools provide protection for mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone and Android in addition to the humble PC.
At the moment, our children are still quite young and whenever we allow them to use our tablets or smartphones, we supervise them to make sure they don’t go to any websites they shouldn’t and also they don’t install and run any unsuitable apps. They are also too young to be social networking but when the time arises that they do, a good software would help provide protection and peace of mind for us. I also would like the feature of being able to limit access during certain times and setting a maximum number of hours.
Recently, we reviewed and have the 1stFone mobile phone for Mr K for those instances where he may need to call us which is also great for keeping him safe online as this is a very basic phone.
Also one of my friend’s 15 year old step daughter had posted a photo of her bathing in a bathtub on Facebook. My friend got the shock of her life and had to immediately ban her step daughter from doing that! She obviously did not install any software yet but it would be great if she did. It is so dangerous when children don’t understand the risks of the internet! As my children are still young where they don’t have any social accounts, I am very interested to know how do you keep your older children safe online?