Staying safe on the internet

Since the development of the internet, which nowadays covers many aspects of our lives, always a very important matter was parental control over the inappropriate content that our children can discover there. This also included various television services, like adult channels or recently the mobile devices. The features that are linked to parental control can be grouped into few different categories, which are content filters, usage controls and computer usage management tools. Those programs are often used in a different way, for example by employers who block access for their workers to the various websites, like youtube or facebook.

Tools we can use

There are many types of software that provide excellent parental controls on internet, but together with the rapid expansion of mobile devices, comes across way more possibilities of maintaining effective control. For example, some types of software for smartphones offer multiple options, like tracking our kids movements and see the routes they take, or setting some kind of allowed area on the map, leaving which would send us an alert. Together with managing harmful applications, telephone calls, text messages and browsing the internet, those devices can be really usefull tool in order to protect our children.

Conversation is essential

But we have to face the fact, that none of the filters or other types of control are always 100% effective. Always the best thing before installing control software is to simply talk with your children about staying safe on the internet and that they always should turn directly to you when they get into any kind of trouble. If they love using social networking sites (and we know they do!), we can teach them how to use the privacy settings in order to keep their personal information safe, and advice to make contacts only with people they know in real life. The other problem we could face might be keeping up to date with the technology that you and your children are using, because on many occasions our kids might have better skills and orientation in the IT than we do.

How the media can help us

Entertainment businesses have also enforced certain rules that were supposed to protect the children from inappropriate content, for example the PEGI (Pan European Game Information) ratings, which are used to label by age various products, like films, DVDs and computer games. The latter often contain products that may contain violence, nudity or use of drugs, and therefore they should be monitored with special attention. Some of the big game producers like Blizzard Entertainment, provide a wide selection of parent control options in their products. Through the options available parents or guardians may for example limit their children play limits, setting specific play time schedules, managing voice chat or block the ability to purchase in-game items for real life money.

Summary

As we can see, there are many threats over the internet that may cause harm to the young people (some of them not mentioned above, like cyber bullying), but we are certainly not helpless when it comes to protect our children from improper online material or wasting too much time before the screen.

PCWebControl is parental monitoring software for any
computer activities. It is widely used not only by parents, but also by the
companies or schools. For more informations, check www.pcwebcontrol.com.