13. How to Protect Our Kids using the Internet

Happy half hour at the breakfast bar in our house…

How do we keep our kids safe when they use computers? Detectives Roche and Stewart, from the Internet Crimes Against Children task force in Utah, were interviewed on a WAM Safety podcast, episodes 121 and 122, and they made an interesting comparison:

“Would you give the keys to your house to your child, and let them bring in strangers at 1 am? This is what you are doing if you let your child on the internet unmonitored.”

Here’s what we do in our house to protect our grandchildren:

1. Limit screen time. Andy and Addie love 4:30 to 5:00 pm in our house. While I cook dinner, they sit at the breakfast bar and are allowed to play games online. This time is in addition to ABC mouse (20 minutes Monday through Friday) for Addie and iReady Math and Reading (used by our public school system) for Andy while an adult is standing behind them. I do not confuse necessary work with play and I only limit the recreational time. This is our summer routine. I have caught both roaming beyond games and schoolwork and monitoring their use, however unpopular, is needed. When raising my biological children, decades ago, I had them give me their phones at bedtime, which I hid in a cupboard above the refrigerator. I did this after catching each one under the covers of their bed texting away. Today, smart phones are more common than “pay by the minutes used” Tracphones which my now adult children had then. The potential for predators in apps is high, and as my Dad used to say, “Nothing good happens after midnight.” Lastly, Sunday is a tech free day. No iPads, video games, or other handheld electronic games. (Get outside and play!)

2. Learn and use parental controls, firewalls, and content blockers. We are older and didn’t grow up with computers. Our kids know more than we do about technology-and are very comfortable with it. Google, Chrome, Apple, Mozilla, Firefox and almost every browser company know more than our five and almost eight year old, but if you have teens, they can probably get around this. Even Addie, at the age of four, knew how to hack my iPhone by researching on YouTube. If Andy wants me to download a game, and many allow players, complete strangers, to message each other and chat during play, Google controls put a hard stop on those out of his preset age range in the parental controls I set up. I understand Apple has similar ability to limit downloads with preset limits parents set. He can whine and plead all he wants, but I can look and see in Google’s review that the content is violent, encourages bad values, or is sexual in nature. Andy’s counselor recently told us to stop letting him play Roblox because he was reacting and obsessing about it. I deleted it and parental controls don’t allow him to reinstall it without my permission. (He didn’t even get upset about my deleting it to my surprise!) I believe the trick is to be solid in your stance as a parent who wants to keep them safe and talk about it without wavering. As a teen, if I really wanted a prohibited thing, I probably would have gone elsewhere to get to it, but at least I would have been limited and slowed down. Here are some links to various browsers’ parental controls:

   Google and Chrome

   Apple parental controls

   Mozilla Firefox parental controls

3. Monitor, monitor again, and monitor some more. MySpace was a popular site when my biological kids were growing up. The site required children be thirteen to have an account. After relentless badgering, I let James, age eleven, and Cassidy, age nine, have an account after checking off their age as thirteen. BIG MISTAKE!!! I audited their pages and learned several truths. They simply over shared information that could have led a predator straight to them, despite my safety lecture never to tell anyone where we lived, went to school, etc. Furthermore, even if Cassidy hadn’t talked about her school basketball games that were coming up, her friends, posting comments on her page did. James refused to let me look at his page. I took the huge hard drive box away until he did. I realized back then that he talked smack to girls trying to impress them, some of whom he did not know except as an online persona. Who really knew if they were thirteen or forty, male or female?

   Oprah Winfrey had a talkshow and once covered “stranger danger” in an episode. With parents’ permission, she tested ten children to see how they would react to a potential predator in person. All the children had been taught by their families about the evils of going with someone they didn’t know. Only one child passed the test. “Would you help me find my puppy?” was the bait, not candy. It is obvious that just talking to our children isn’t enough-although it’s a start. I conducted audits of my biological kids online activities and found them oversharing on numerous occasions, and lectured them each time. As tiring as new learning can be, I cannot stress how important it is that as older parents we bring ourselves up to date. Letting kids give the keys to your house to let strangers in is a great comparison, and very scary.

4. Talk to your kids and teach them. (The following six tips are from safewise.com which has multiple resources for parents and I highly recommend. Parents of older children may want to check out the section on Cyberbullying and what to do if your child is the victim or the bully. My heart goes out to the parents of children who die each year from this modern day reality.)

   -Never share personal information online.

   -Don’t respond to emails, texts, or messages from strangers.

   -Don’t post or share photos online. (Easily backed up with parental controls. Kids share photos with your approval.)

   -Don’t click links, open attachments, or accept gifts from someone you don’t know.

   -NEVER agree to meet someone you met online. (Guess that screws with internet dating, lol.)

   -Let your parents or another trusted adult know if you need help.

5. Be kind. I have always told every child I raise that if they wouldn’t let me see what they wrote, chatted, took a picture of, or drew, it shouldn’t be written, chatted, photographed or drawn. Being kind isn’t an option. It’s a hard and fast rule. Period.

My neighbor once asked me when the first set of toddler children were giving me grief, “Who’s the parent?!” Patty was right, of course. I was wishy washy and trying to please too much. Now, the second time around, I like to think I’m a newer-okay, older, improved version. I wouldn’t hesitate to take their phones away (when we get to that point), especially to keep them safe. My selective hearing has improved over the decades to turn out whining automatically.

I use the internet myself-a lot. Jennifer was always good with computers. When the parents of Addie and Andy dropped out of physical sight, I searched for them online. In an information era, there is a great deal that is public, and there’s also private information shared by individuals about themselves that becomes public. The very information that we warn our children not to post is often available for us to find about the beloved addicts in our lives.