Welcome to the Wired Cub!
This page is dedicated to the safe interaction of Children and the Internet. On the For Kids page you will see a presentation of kid's sites that we have investigated and feel are safe (within reason) for children to visit. You will also see that each is rated with a "Level" of 1, 2 or 3.
Level 1 indicates that we feel the site is extremely safe for children. It may have a shopping page but the items for sale are either education-oriented or otherwise "safe" and so less apt to be bought for problematic use.
Level 2 indicates that the site's page contents are safe for children but may have advertising or a shopping page that contain toys and other promotional items that may entice a child in some manner.
Level 3 indicates that the site's page contents are safe for children but has a monitored "chat page" concept. This may be run in a safe manner but any form of direct communication between a child and the internet is always a concern and should be monitored by a parent.
Below you will see a link to an article on Parental Control Programs that you may wish to read if your child is using the internet extensively.
Here are some tips you may find useful:
STAY AWAY from chat sites like MySpace.com! They are open hunting grounds for child abusers!
Have your child give you a tour of any site they want to have permission to use. This will give you both a chance to see what the site offers and how to use the activities there. When you are done, take a moment alone to take your own tour to look for areas of concern and to read any tips for parents that may be on the site.
Make sure you have any and all user names and passwords to the sites your children are using. This will help if they forget the information and will allow you to check out the site periodically.
Check the History button on your Web browser (like Internet Explorer) to see where you child has been. You may want to consider using the parental control programs shown in the article below!
Make sure the only email address your child has is YOUR email address! This will mean that the web site will have to go through YOU to contact your child through an external message. Many sites are sending the parents an email when the child applies for "membership" with information and security protocols for the site. We like this trend very much!
Use other media for background! Always direct your child to books for additional information on a subject. The Internet is full of relatively short information bits that are fun to use, but too much like watching TV in that it doesn't promote a longer attention span.
We strongly encourage parents both to be involved in and to LIMIT the amount of time your children are on the Internet. Please encourage other activities such as family outings, sports, and other more exercise-oriented programs to round out your child's (and your) life!
Be aware of the other usages of the PC your child is using! When surfing the web, sites often place a small data file on your PC called a cookie. This file carries information about your visit to that site, the time, the IP address of your PC, etc. More extensive cookies are used in web marketing tools to track your browsing habits and interests. Bottom line: We used a PC cleaned of cookies to visit the Games page of horses4kids.com. The ads next to the games were pretty kid-safe (see the left side image below). We then let my 10 yr old daughter use the PC to surf her favorite sites. When we returned to the Games page, there was more Tween oriented ads and a Love quiz that dealt with boy/girlfriend concepts for that age group. Lastly, we used our un-cleaned Crash Dummy PC (the one we use to visit the dark depths of the Internet) to visit the page and the adversing included a scantily clad model in a bikini (see the far right image below). The site link was for beach apparel and equal to a risque Sears catalog, but it was not child-oriented in any way! Get the Picture?
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We are grateful that Massachusetts Lions District 33Y has published our article about safe computer use for kids in their newsletter. heck out our artible on page 7.
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33Y Feb 2008 Newsletter |
Parental Control Programs help us address one of the most important Internet-related issues (the other is Identity Theft) we have; our kids web surfing. The Wired Lion looks are these utilities and presents the features of the what we think are the top four!
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Parental Control Programs |
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