The internet can be a dangerous place. As adults we know that there are plenty of websites out there we wouldn’t want our children to see. Pornography, violence, hate speech and swear words are all plentiful on the internet, not to mention the danger posed from predators and bullies in certain chat rooms. Even sites like Facebook and Twitter are not immune to one of parents newest concerns – cyber-bullying.
What is Cyber-bullying?
Cyber-bullying is a recent occurrence that mainly takes place on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, or in chat rooms. Children can get picked on in a variety of ways, usually verbal abuse, which can affect them greatly. Sometimes it involves two children that know each other (from school for example), and other times the children don’t. Adults tend not to understand the full consequences of cyber-bullying, as it’s something we have no direct experience of.
Monitor your child while he serves WWW.
We all want to keep our children safe, but we also know that curiosity and a tendency to explore is rife at that young age. One click on a misleading, misplaced advert can bring content to our children’s eyes that we really don’t want them to see. That being said, holding our kids back from the internet can be counter-productive. Certain studies have shown that kids who are more computer illiterate can struggle to keep up at school, and it’s no secret that having a multitude of computer skills can help in many aspects of life.
Third party applications –
Thankfully, some smart people around the world have developed a selection of tools that can help us as parents. And a couple in particular are becoming more and more common place in the parenting arsenal. Computer monitoring software and Parental control software can both help in their own specific ways, and both work either on their own, or together, depending on your specific situation and needs. Computer monitoring and parental control software are essentially two sides of the same coin, let’s take a look at what each application does…
Parental control software is great for parents of young children, who are just being taught about the internet. There are plenty of great learning and entertainment resources for kids online, and what parental control software does is allows children to see these sites but blocks any site with questionable content. The software will scan any requested page before it’s shown and if any adult words or images are found the software will block that page.
Computer monitoring software works almost oppositely to parental controls. It will monitor what’s going on but never interfere. Monitoring software will report on any websites visited and any applications used, including anything typed into each. Monitoring software is completely hidden when it’s running, meaning it’s great for older kids who you want to keep an eye on online, without being too intrusive.
These applications can be a great help for parents of kids of any age, and they can also work brilliantly together (some developers combine them), to have complete control over the family computer. To find out more about computer monitoring and parental controls, head over to Gecko Parents, who have versions of each.
