Kids and the intermanet

[davej]

Fact: The internet is a scary place. 
Fact: Kids are stupid

These two truths keep me up at night wondering how, as parents, can we best prepare them for entering the digital world yet still provide that access in an appropriate and safe manor as possible? Right now it's not too bad, they use their kindles in kid mode which has to have content white listed to them, plus has timers and ability to limit by type. i.e. I can turn off games but leave access to books. Oh, and a shout out to Amazon for recently opening the portal parents.amazon.com so I can remotely manage their configurations, this has been a huge help! 

My daughter is getting to an age where some of her friends are getting smartphones, she's started in on asking for one but hasn't fought the flat 'no' yet. 
My running plan is to setup a full web proxy at the house for when computers/phones make their entrance and restrict access through that, but it won't solve the issue when they go somewhere else for access. Hopefully the devices will come with some better parent administration in the next couple of years, but I'm curious if anyone has experience with that on any other platforms like ios or android?

A big part of the equation for me is having open discussions around the dangers that exist out there and try to help them learn how to think critically and protect themselves. In my 'trust but verify' mentality, I still want/need to be able to provide a safety net around them though, so any ideas or experiences you may have would be welcomed.

[ViPER1313]

A quick Google shows a number of 3rd party solutions for both IOS and Android. IOS solutions appear to monitor what is stored in the IOS cloud, so you would need to make sure that cloud sync remains enabled. All monitoring apps for either platform are going to be limited into what data they can sniff (especially for encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp)

Your most effective protection would probably be to randomly check the phone at times and preemptively take a small screwdriver and break the camera lens.

[Ken]

Fact: The internet is a scary place. 
Fact: Kids are stupid

These two truths keep me up at night wondering how, as parents, can we best prepare them for entering the digital world yet still provide that access in an appropriate and safe manor as possible? Right now it's not too bad, they use their kindles in kid mode which has to have content white listed to them, plus has timers and ability to limit by type. i.e. I can turn off games but leave access to books. Oh, and a shout out to Amazon for recently opening the portal parents.amazon.com so I can remotely manage their configurations, this has been a huge help! 

My daughter is getting to an age where some of her friends are getting smartphones, she's started in on asking for one but hasn't fought the flat 'no' yet. 
My running plan is to setup a full web proxy at the house for when computers/phones make their entrance and restrict access through that, but it won't solve the issue when they go somewhere else for access. Hopefully the devices will come with some better parent administration in the next couple of years, but I'm curious if anyone has experience with that on any other platforms like ios or android?

A big part of the equation for me is having open discussions around the dangers that exist out there and try to help them learn how to think critically and protect themselves. In my 'trust but verify' mentality, I still want/need to be able to provide a safety net around them though, so any ideas or experiences you may have would be welcomed.

Not near having kids yet, but i have given this some thought myself.

As you said, in your own home it's not too bad. Access points and routers these days have pretty good built in filters, etc. 

Just some quick googling lead me to this - seems to be what you would want Kaspersky Safe Kids. Filters regardless of location, app management & screen time. Paid version also includes some kind of social media supervision, too.

[ScottyB]

tuning into this thread because i'm only a few years away from having to form a plan around this exact same subject.

A big part of the equation for me is having open discussions around the dangers that exist out there and try to help them learn how to think critically and protect themselves.

i think that's the only effective solution as they get older, and the key is being open and real about it. same goes in particular for social media and chat apps in whatever form that exists in the next few years. if they wanna see something online, they'll either go to some other place to get access or get their friends to do it for them, so might as well head them off at the pass.

another tertiary subject that we'll be talking over with our son is also dependence on devices/screen time. the hard part being i'll need to lead by example. my wife teaches college kids and its eye opening how many of them are literally dependent, with a capital "D", on getting a social media/internet fix at constant and frequent intervals. she talks to kids every day that are smart, but come in to her office confused about whey they're failing and after getting to the core of the issue she finds out these kids are spending 6+ hours a day looking at bullshit on the internet and 1 to 2 hours studying the stuff that they need to in order to graduate and get on with their life.

[Apoc]

Anything you can do, they can eventually undo. They will likely be more tech savvy than you, eventually, and even if you lock things down there's always other devices/accounts/etc. We plan on locking things down at home, but education is going to be the most effective tool we have. That, and I'm going to make it clear that we own passwords/devices and our kid is just borrowing them from us.

We'll see how everything pans out, but I'm guessing my kids first phone will not be smartphone. A lot can happen in the 10 years before he gets one, but I have no qualms about my kid having to text via T9.

[RawrImAMonster]

Censoring the internet at home isn't going to stop them from seeing the exact same stuff at school on their friends phones.

Just teach them how to navigate it as safely as possible. I was turned loose on the internet around 6 or 7 and am barely emotionally scarred at all.

[Senor_Taylor]

Censoring the internet at home isn't going to stop them from seeing the exact same stuff at school on their friends phones.

Just teach them how to navigate it as safely as possible. I was turned loose on the internet around 6 or 7 and am barely emotionally scarred at all.

So many hours trying to load boobs on Google images on Dial Up after I figured out internet explorer worked after logging on through AOL.

I didn't get internet until 07, when I was 12, but I don't remember having ill intentions before then. Maybe that's just because I didn't have internet so my mind didn't wonder what shit I could get into if I had it


I'm a little unsure what this thread is about? Are we afraid of what things kids may fine... Or the PEOPLE they may find. I'm more worried about the latter.

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[Apoc]

Censoring the internet at home isn't going to stop them from seeing the exact same stuff at school on their friends phones.

Just teach them how to navigate it as safely as possible.  I was turned loose on the internet around 6 or 7 and am barely emotionally scarred at all.

I'm not worried about content, I'm worried about them chatting with friends when they should be sleeping and being groomed by predators. I never had any controls on my internet and was downloading nudies via bulletin boards when I was like 10, so I don't think every person out there is bad, but I do want to know who they talk to and how often.

[ViPER1313]

Future me in 6 or 7 years is most worried about predators and sexting. I figure the best prevention is conversation. It’s a hard concept to grasp at 10 years old that anything you do online is forever, but that is the reality. It wasn’t as much of an issue when we were 10 because it was much harder to produce compromising content.

Just introduce your kids to the MM forums and groupme so they can waste their days away here like we do.

[Senor_Taylor]

Looking back at event Facebook posts when I was in my preteen years, people can be pretty ruthless. Cyber bullying would be a concern I'd have, or kids finding their way over to 4Chan or the like and being influenced by people who just want to see the world burn.

These are different than your friends just showing you something. We all showed each other blue waffle on the bus and are none the worse. What I'd be concerned about is someone scamming them, or convincing them to do something bad, or influencing them in weird ways while they're up in their room on their iPad.


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[Sijray21]

i think communication and education are key along with a good relationship with your kid. there's no stopping a kid from creating an account under an alias on any social media or p2p communication app that their parent wouldn't know about. i am more concerned about the kiddo wasting more time on the phone instead of doing things in real life with their friends and family. obviously i'm not there yet, but i'll likely address firewall issues if internet abuse becomes a problem. I like the idea of changing the wifi password for the channel/ssid they have access to based on if they've completed chores/homework/etc. gaining control over their phone and access to the contacts is pretty straight forward, but i want to try to do that as little as possible. i'm obviously not there yet since my kid is 3, but i'll stay tuned to what parents are doing to keep their kids safe while still allowing to learn/grow on their own.

[Beej]

My sister has some service through VZW that allows pretty close monitoring of their kid's iPhone.  They get a report of number of minutes and texts and to who, and can log in to actually see the content of them.

Limiting access to other communications apps and social media stuff is another battle, but I thought that was pretty useful.

[davej]

Yeah, most of the concern is with what Chris and Adam pointed out, other people contacting/communicating with them. I agree, information wants to be free and I'm not going to pretend I can control/prevent what they are exposed to but I do hope to help instill good time management and while they are young. Being able to limit content to certain things while at the house or on a device I own will still raise the bar a bit.

BJ, that Verizon bit seems like a nice big brother feature that I could get behind if needed as a backup, although I have no desire to spy on my kids text with their friends, being able to audit if necessary is reasonable.

The privacy aspect is key also, I've been talking at them for years and I think it's starting to sink in when my daughter asked her grandmother why she wanted to have Alexa recording everything they say from their Dot thing. (not that a phone is any better, but I was a proud IT Security Dad moment for me)

Adam, your point of the permanency of social media is spot on and those conversations will be worked in also. I'm just glad we didn't have easy access to record/upload stuff when I was a kid, gahd I was an idiot.

[ViPER1313]

As someone who has always been pretty tech savvy and currently works in the computer industry, I place 0 faith in any piece of software successfully limiting access to content. I always worked around whatever limitations schools or parents put on my devices. I assume my kids will do the same.

One example: my high school put a boot loader security package to lock down all the PCs. It prevented software installs / access to the file system; really draconian stuff. I made a pair of bootable floppy disks; one that removed the loader, one that put it back. Problem solved.

[davej]

As someone who has always been pretty tech savvy and currently works in the computer industry, I place 0 faith in any piece of software successfully limiting access to content. I always worked around whatever limitations schools or parents put on my devices. I assume my kids will do the same.

One example: my high school put a boot loader security package to lock down all the PCs. It prevented software installs / access to the file system; really draconian stuff. I made a pair of bootable floppy disks; one that removed the loader, one that put it back. Problem solved.

If I were your dad, I would be so proud.

[Apoc]

When I was a kid, my high school pulled me and a few friends out of class on a semi-regular basis to fix their computers. Nevermind that many of the problems were created by us and they had no idea.

Full disclosure: I went to HS in the mid 90s.

[.RJ]

Damn kids and their internet, I had to hike up hill in the snow both ways to see pixelated dial up porn!

I'm old AF...

[BLINGMW]

I'm in the "guide them" instead of "restrict them" camp, also due to restricting being pretty hard to accomplish baring moving to some remote Amish village. There is also no way I would consider a smart phone until high school, and any phone would be on a "need" basis, not "want". Some kids have them in 4th and 5th grade at my kid's school, it's ridiculous. Keep computers in family areas and get them in the mode of asking for permission for ANYTHING outside of what you've already approved and downloaded for them. So far.... seems to be working. I've told them to think of the internet as a massive public place, and just like they wouldn't be walking around a city without an adult, they won't be internetting without one either. I don't yet know what my high school plan is. Treat them like adults I guess if they earn it.

[Steve85]

A big part of the equation for me is having open discussions around the dangers that exist out there and try to help them learn how to think critically and protect themselves. In my 'trust but verify' mentality, I still want/need to be able to provide a safety net around them though, so any ideas or experiences you may have would be welcomed.

This has been our approach through a couple generations of internet access. The girls are 25 and 29, there was only one computer in the house and smartphones weren't a thing for "kids" when they were young (they were 8 and 12 when we got married in 2002) Monitoring was easy at home but it was also apparent friends had much more open access. It was a quick lesson in the lack of control. And yeah, pretty sure the younger one had more than one myspace...

The boys are 13 and 15 and as mentioned, there is nothing they won't see on someone else's device no matter what we do. 

We have regular talks about what to watch out for in terms of predators, including people in their real life, and the permanence of what they say and do on social media. That anything can be captured forever by someone no matter how temporary any app pretends to be. We are very clear about access to their phones at any time but even that has limited effectiveness in terms of monitoring. I do have some parental controls set up on VZ to let me know about new contacts, picture messages, limit time and time of day restrictions. The notes about new contacts and stuff is good to drive questions and communication and a reminder that we are watching. We've talked about cyber-bullying from both perspectives because like or not, without guidance, your kid is just as likely to be the bully as the victim.

XBOX was originally pretty locked down in terms of communication, only allowing them to communicate with friends. Which I guess was pretty frustrating for them playing Destiny and such, oh well. It was good that we only had the one live account (mine) when they were a bit younger. We've loosened up some with them getting older and we are mostly around when they are playing. Which is good, until a teammate doesn't provide cover or something then it's the end of the world... FWIW, they are only allowed to play on non-school nights. 

Locking down and monitoring to age appropriate is a good tool but we learned quickly that we have to try be ahead of them too in terms of maturity and what they can access elsewhere. We could do more, we could do less. Here's the thing though, they need to have the tools to make the right decisions and the confidence and support to make them as early as possible.  The first time they take off with the car by themselves to go hang out with friends, you'll forget all about how the internet scared you.

[rherold9]

MMParentingsports

Restriction is probably the worse thing you can do. Helicopter parents are the worst. Monitoring is smart for a safety standpoint, but kids have to learn the way kids do? Communication/trust will go a long way. At least for me it did. I'll try to raise my kids the way my parents raised me as I sort of turned out mostly okay