Another Type of Home Security: Children and the Internet

How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online

Another type of home security, children and the internet, is something that people wouldn’t usually link together. Recently across the internet there has been a very disturbing video of a young girl killing herself and it has been accessed by many young children across the nation. After hearing about this video, a great number of schools sent out a letter to parents stating that they are doing everything that they can do to protect children by controlling what they see on the internet. We as parents can not be with our children every waking minute of the day, but in order to ensure safety online during computer use, there are many steps you can take to make sure that your child doesn’t ever come across another disturbing video again.

Teaching Children about Online Safety

Online safety is another measure in home security because of the information that can be relayed on the internet. The most important rule for online safety for children is to set up a time with how long that children can go online.

Your children should never give out personal information to anyone or at anytime. Giving out any information should be the decision made by the parent.
Never give out your passwords to any one other then parents.
Never allow children to post pictures without approval from the parents. It happens and people find a way to use pictures as a source to find out where you or your children are at.
If messages come across the computer and you don’t know who the person is, don’t respond. Your child should close the opened app or window and tell an adult.
Before downloading any software that might damage the computer, children should ask parents first.

What Parents Can Do To Secure Online Safety

If you have young children that are using the computer ,you want to do the following things to protect your children and the computer:

Set up security guidelines (block all sites your children can not go on) on the computer. Your children should only be on age appropriate websites.
Set up a timer to measure the length of time your children is on the computer. Some software programs have a timer that will allow the computer so shut off after a certain length of time.
After your children has been on the computer, always be sure to check the browser history to see where your child went to.
If you are not home and you don’t want your children to have access to the computer until you get home, there are ways to add a password to the computer. Make the password something that your children will never figure out.