Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Are You As Tech-Savvy as Your Child?

There was a recent comment made on my post called It's Never Been Easier To Spy On Your Children, wherein a parent asked if there were any websites or forums that might help her to parent and protect her tech-savvy teen without taking away his administration privileges.

Admittedly, I am not an expert on this subject. I know a little bit about internet filtering, and have recently learned about accountability software, which, although it is intended for self-use by adults, may be an interesting approach to teaching older children about disciplining themselves to visit appropriate online content.

I don't know enough to address the subtleties of this particular issue, since it may (or may not!) include brand new restrictions on a child who is used to none, or have something to do with a child who is hiding things from his parents, so here is the point wherein I pass along another blog.
Teens Today with Vanessa Van Petten has a great post/advice column that addresses reviews of specific parental control software. It includes links.

I do not know of any specific forums that address this issue, although I think they would be interesting. Readers, if you know of any, please comment!

I believe that any parent's best bet is to get educated. Learn just a little bit more than your child, and try to keep the balance that way for a long, long time.

3 comments:

Miss Suzy said...

Neat. Thank you for passing this along. This seems to be a hot topic and I hope to do more posts on this in the next two weeks! Let's talk....

Miss Suzy said...

Oh. I think I need this software, by the way. I have a little "eBay issue" that I don't like to talk about.

GregH said...

To control my kids on-line activity, I use a simple computer timer called Ez Internet Timer. I’d rather give my kids a total time limit (daily duration) and let the kids have the freedom to choose when to use it. I can easily add/remove time on any particular day with just a couple clicks.