kids online : What Can Parents Do
Keyword: kids online
These days the whole world has come next door to you, all thanks to the high internet penetration. kids online has become a very serious issue with a lot of worried parents and other organizations dealing with child safety. Children of all ages use the internet these days, and they are exposed to all kinds of web content. For parents to be ensured of kids online , they have to supervise and control their child’s every move.
When we talk about kids online , we mean safety from the inappropriate content that are posted on the web, the chat rooms, where one could find a lot of people ready to snatch the innocence off the kids and various other activities like gaming etc, which may at times encourage violence. Parents need to protect their wards from such misleading entities on the web. For a child’s safety online one can impose a few rules on the usage of the computers as well as the internet. A few of them can include, keeping the computer in a common room instead of the child’s bedroom, encouraging your child to discuss what they see on the net and what they learned. Parents must be aware that kids are afraid of punishment and might not say a few things fearing punishment. The parent should encourage the child to share everything with them.
To encourage child online safety, a lot of organizations are taking the initiative to build filtering software and web security software that help in automating the filtration process and what a child can view on the net. Lots of inappropriate content like pornography, violence, communal hatred etc can be blocked and gradually allowed to be viewed by children as they grow older. The parents should be open to discussion on various topics to educate their children and to make them understand that the difference between good and bad on the internet is the same as that in real life. Child online safety can also be imposed by asking the child not to give away personal information on the web.
Child’s online safety is also threatened by games. Children invariably love to play games. But a child’s online safety depends on the kind of games that they are exposed to. A lot of games are coming up in the markets that are completely based on violence and require the player to kill his/her opponent in order to win. Then, there are those games that involve strategy, but of a totally different kind, like flirting with a girl or to make a girl happy and get kisses in the form of rewards.
Parents need to keep a check on the kind of games that their children are allowed to play online. A child’s online safety can also be taken care of by maintaining a log of all the websites that were visited and the programs that were activated in the computer. There is various software that automate these processes, and allow the parents to keep a constant check.
Although we find a lot of organizations taking part in maintaining a child’s online safety by creating appropriate software and laying down firm rules for children to follow, it’s up to the parents to ensure their ward’s safety.
