One Worry Down, 1,298,309 To Go
Posted in mom central and tagged with internet and kids, mom central on 03/07/2009 11:09 am by Jerseygirl89I’m sure there’s a pill for this nowadays, but my grandma would have called it, “borrowing trouble”. Since I don’t seem to have enough to worry about keeping my preschoolers and infant safe, healthy, happy, polite, intelligent and kind, I sometimes think about future problems. Like what I’ll do when Ironflower gets a tattoo and her father flips out. Or what will happen when Lovebug discovers girls.
Mostly, though, it’s fears of what will come before all that. Like the internet. Right now my kids think the internet is for watching Santa travel the world and music videos. Sometimes we play games on Noggin, but only when I’m feeling especially guilty about something, as I’m an only child and have a hard time sharing my laptop. But I know that this won’t last for much longer and it scares me.
I mean, sure the computers will be in plain view and not in their rooms. And sure I’ll look over their shoulders just enough to drive them crazy. But I sincerely doubt that’ll be enough. So I was thrilled (and, just as important, relieved) when I heard about Norton Online Family.
Norton Online Family lets you check on everything your kids are doing online – what they’re searching for, where they’ve been, what they’re doing on social networking sites. It will prevent your kids from sharing personal information. It will email you alerts about what your child is doing. It has no stealth mode, so it’s an honest contract between parents and kids. It will even manage your kids’ time on the computer so they don’t spend hours taking ridiculous quizzes on Facebook (er, maybe I should put the program on the laptop now, just to test it out, of course). You set it up once and then can customize each family member’s profile, so your spouse doesn’t have to know how many “work” hours you spend sending flair on Facebook. Um, not that I do that.
Anyway, Norton Online Family makes me feel much better about my worry of the kids on the internet someday.
Too bad Norton doesn’t make a potty training program.
March 7th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Just a quick FYI – Mac computers have a lot of that all built in. No need for a third party software. I monitor my kids facebook accounts and I can read WORD for WORD what they say when Instant Messaging their friends (and of course, they still say things they shouldn’t)
Just thought you’d like to know. It is truly scare out there as they learn to maneuver the internet better than their parents.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
If Norton made a potty training program, it would sell more copies than Windows.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Hey Jersey,
Okay, I’m going to look into that! For now, they’re only allowed on educational sites and sites with limited chat (which means they can’t type in their own messages, there’s a list of messages provided that they can click) – that feature is kind of nice because they can still talk to kids online, but there’s no danger of them giving out any kind of personal information.
Plus, they don’t get to be online without me around… they do, however, get computer time at school – so you’re aware when they get up into 4th 5th grade… and those computers are not safeguarded as well as you might think. Make sure you talk to your kids about internet protocol and WHY – that’s the biggest problem, parents are afraid to talk about it honestly, thinking if they say it aloud it’ll make the worst case scenarios happen. If kids know what to look out for and why, they’re less likely to be victims.