As my DS6 becomes more interested in researching online, I'm wondering how other parents deal with this. He's pretty independent with typing, etc., but I worry about what might pop. Do you use filters? Any programs? Thanks!

We started with the firefox addon "Kidzui". But we dropped it once the older two were both getting frustrated that it didn't allow access to educational websites for older kids because they were not on the "acceptable" list. I am sure that it would have been updated somewhat by now, and may be worth your checking it out.

We don't use anything on their laptops now, and they have been instructed to close browser windows immediately or call us if anything funny pops up at all, including anything that looks nothing like their intended search or anything that makes them go "huh???".

It seems to be working. They also each have a small A6 notebook next to their laptops so that they can come ask us to confirm spelling when they are searching. It helps to eliminate some dodgy search results.

The obvious is also to set your browser security settings to their strongest, keep all PC's in rooms where everyone can see them and explain the rules about chatting online. My kids are not allowed to install new games without one of us checking them out first, and if there is live chat we disable it unless it's something like LAN games or co-operative games with people they know.

Aiden is starting to ask why and we have had long chats about what is safe or not safe to divulge online to anyone: eg. no sharing of full name, address, telephone numbers, age, info on his brothers, no sharing of pictures via internet programs or sites (only e-mails - which is fine cause I am copied on any and all mails he sends and receives).

Ummm I can;t think of anything else off the top of my head.

We have Microsoft Family Safety turned on on the computer DS uses, which is really just because it was as easy to do as not on the new computer, but mostly rely on DS's sense, as Madoosa says. Combine with making sure he understands I'm his sysadmin and you don't keep secrets from the sysadmins :-) It's not actually that easy to find inappropriate things by accident, unless you have very strict ideas of what's inappropriate.

I have been considering Net Nanny. I disagree about the ease of finding inappropriate content. A misspelled website name can bring you to something that is supposed to be 18+.

I know our school had some issues with that type of thing and they changed their filter.

As a parent of a teenager I am fairly lax and don't supervise too carefully. He does have "safe search" on, but otherwise no other filters. My son is only allowed to use his computer is a public room in the house. We have talks about what is appropriate online behavior. Some of this is trust. And yes he has his own computer, and taking it away is our main punishment.

I am mostly worried about online chatting. And that the male centric computer game sites he frequents are populated by anti-social young male adults who model inappropriate ways to talk with and about women.

When he was younger (6 & 7) most of his computer time was spend on games on CD and not online on a computer. When he did go online for research I would supervise. Times have changed and all the games and fun stuff are now online.

Thank you all. Our computer is in an easy-to-view place and, to this point, I've been right there with him. He uses educational programs, blogs on kidblog, and more recently likes to dive down research rabbit holes. The latter is my concern as I do feel it's easy to have something inappropriate pop up just with misspelling.

AWESOME resource!! thanks for the link

sorry to answer your concern as well - this is why my boys have a notepad so that they can ask us spelling. I will often take the books randomly and write some key phrases down that have recently popped up in conversations and shows they see etc.

That's a great idea, Madoosa. I think I'm going to steal it

Kidblog is fantastic. My son is obsessed.

happy to share - happy to steal your idea too (kidblog)

lol

One of our favorite tools when DD was slightly younger (and determined to use the computer in ways that were slightly outside the lines of our household's AUP)--

K9.

Best. thing. ever.

There is a whole ecosystem of online threats, so how you counter them depends on which ones you're worried about.

- Malware: Apart from virus protection, DD also surfs under a user account that lacks admin privileges (so she can't accidentally install malware), and in Firefox with the NoScript plugin (which prevents a lot of those accidental malware installations from ever beginning or ever showing her a pop-up to begin installation).

- Privacy: I helped DD set up an email address using fake identifying information that she can use to register to websites, and we had a number of conversations over the value of anonymity during the process and since setting it up. At this stage DD9 is a consumer of the internet only, so she's not having interactions in which she might be tempted to share personal information. Nevertheless, we've already educated her on the dangers, so we've gotten in front of that problem.

- Age-inappropriate content: Google safe search is turned on, and otherwise, I haven't seen much of a need. DD9 loves to surf Youtube, but the most objectionable material is only accessible when you log in and identify yourself as over 18. Easy enough to bypass, but at this stage, DD9 has no motivation. This is a threat I'm not worried about.

This also more than a few times happened at our kids' first elementary school. I've also seen inappropriate websites pop up a few times based on the phrases in a search rather than misspellings.

The largest challenge for us at home hasn't been those obvious adult websites or obviously inappropriate places etc. The challenge has been how to keep our kids on track when surfing and not wandering off into areas that they really need to have introduced to them by a living breathing human adult, not by watching a video etc online.

Please know I'm about as far from being prudish or conservative as a person can get - that's not what I'm talking about. The biggest one here recently has been videos posted to youtube by other children - of themselves. Not nude pics or anything remotely "bad" - but vlogs of kids who have been injured in sports accidents - my youngest dd is heavily into sports, so she loves to surf youtube to watch other kids doing sports that she practices. That's actually a good way to use the internet - she can watch technique etc. BUT - by googling "x activity sport x" she found not only those videos, but a lot of links on the side of the screen that go to videos where tweens and teens video themselves and talk in detail about how they were injured during that activity, about surgeries, etc. Again, the videos weren't in any way graphic or scary in an out-there kind of way, but they were scary in a much more subtle way to a kid who is very into her sport and she started worrying about being injured (and also wanted to spend time watching more and more of these videos).

Another example of an issue we've had is with our older dd (middle school) who has a wide range of school topics to research, and with her free-er reaching searches finds topics she is very interested in that are very complex - war, discrimination, etc. All good things for her to learn about, and she is a kid who asks *tons* of questions - which is all good! But if another of my children who didn't ask a ton of questions was landing in the same spots and reading the same things, I'd want to know about it so I could insert some discussion. Opening the internet to do research is very different than opening an encyclopedia back in the days when I was a teen.

My last example is just a silly thing but something that happened when we weren't looking (because we didn't think we needed to be lol). We have email accounts for each of our kids and request that we (parents) know their passwords so we can check how they are using their email. It's really been fine, no content or stranger email issues or anything. We'd used a widely-used provider to create the accounts... but we technically stretched the truth by saying our kids were 13 (or whatever age they needed to be to sign up). We neglected to mention that to our kids, although we've had lots of talks about how sites like FB etc require users to be 13 and there are kids (including friends of theirs) who still are able to create the accounts etc etc. We've also talked ad nauseum about how you never share personal info online. (Which brings in yet another point - don't count on all your kids taking everything you say seriously or actually doing what you tell them to do 100% of the time... but I digress)... anyway our older dd was having fun with all the personalization you can do on your email account with avatars, background etc, and also was really into the "social circles" things where you have friends in your circle etc - all of which was ok - until - she included her sister and updated her sister's info including her sister's real birthdate. Which meant her sister's email account got locked... which meant all the precious emails her sister had from her cousins and aunts were now not accessible which meant her sister was beyond upset... so then dad gets involved (which you would think is a good thing, right?) and being the good dad he is he found a way to unlock the account (in theory) but in order to do so he had to vouch for being responsible for his child's account *and* enter credit card info which he was beyond loathe to do... but did anyway... with the promise from this very large widely recognizable middle-of-the-road company with the promise that would unlock the account.. and it never did happen.

So anyway, that's been our experience - the things that will be of concern usually aren't the things you would have predicted! We have always and continue to request that our kids work on the computers in the open rooms in our house where adults are present and where everyone can see everyone's screens.

Last thing I'll mention - I'd been to internet safety talks by our police department several years ago and found them really helpful. I went to another this spring thinking I'd already have a good idea of what was going to be said and it was 200% different because things had changed that quickly. I can't even begin to relate here all the info that was passed on, so my suggestion is if the police department in your area offers a similar type of talk - GO.

Best wishes,

polarbear

While I haven't seen a reliable source on this, a lot of people now say average age of first porn exposure is 10 or 11. So, I wouldn't presume we're all safe from it all till the teen years. Not that I've figured out how to handle this issue, other than using SafeSearch and not allowing solo YouTube wanderings.

I can see why you might be concerned about solo YouTube wanderings. As a parent of a teenage boy (15) I'm not that worried about porn. It's more adults who model behavior I don't want him to learn, specifically trash talking women. And this kind of thing is very hard to tell when it's the audio in you-tube video about a computer game unless you pre-watch every last video they see. Filter's don't really work for this. This is why at this age, we mostly talk about what we expect and keep the computer in the living room so we can keep an eye on what he is doing. Most of what he does is computer game related.

The rule I had for facebook when my daughter was younger was that she could only "friend" people that she knew in real life. They didn't have to be close friends, for example classmates were fine. But she wasn't supposed to friend anyone she couldn't easily verify they were who they claimed to be. As she was a very compliant teen I never had any big problems with this. My DS isn't interested in social media sites like facebook, tumblr, twitter, or google+.

I have heard the same thing in school internet safety talks. The lowest age I saw was 8. They said that it was usually accidental exposure at this age.

I wonder what the average age was before the internet.

Back to the original topics about how to have a 6 year old do a safe search. One thing to do is teach your child how to research. There are a few tricks that will keep the search a bit more safe.

Use multiple keywords in the search. For example type "Gecko reptile" rather than "Gecko". Seems repetitive but it gives one a different result.

Don't forget to use the more advanced search tools, such as the News page. Or options that let you set reading level on the search engine.

Use Wikapedia as a jumping off point. At the end of every article is supposed to be a references section. A well written page will have many references, and I find it easier to find them sometimes this way.

Search in places where you know you are going to get good content. Such as magazines or newspapers. National Geographic, Science Mag, and Discover Channel web sites. Or use them in your keywords for searching. If you know of sites you like, bookmark them for your child.

I am sure there are other suggestions out there.

It was 11.

Lots of great suggestions and food for thought. Thank you all!