It was difficult enough for parents just a few short years ago when they had to worry about their children's safety in real-life physical environments such as the local mall, the corner bus stop or even the halls of their own high school. In a digital world, there are no boundaries. The wild west days of the early 1990s Internet may be a distant memory, but there is still no limit to the things a child can see, or even participate in like cyber-bullying, online. Parents who worry about their teens' online activities do have tools at their disposal to monitor computer use, but there are common sense steps to take first to establish some ground rules.
Step 1
Designate a family computer that the kids can use, and put it in a common area of your home. Don't allow secluded surfing.
Step 2
Set specific times that computer use is allowed, and stick to them. The Internet can be a vast source of study material, however, so partition time that is for study and time that is for fun.
Step 3
Get computer savvy in a hurry. Your teens are probably a lot more interested in the latest social networking platform or questionable website than you are, but you need to become as aware as your kids when it comes to technology and the Internet. You can't monitor your child's computer activity if you don't know what you're looking for.
Step 4
Create separate user accounts for the kids. Click on "Start" then "Control Panel." In the window that appears, click on "User Accounts and Parental Controls." There, you can create user accounts for each child. Once that's done, click on each new user and select "Turn on parental controls." You can limit the amount of time each user gets to spend online and even block access to certain programs. You can also filter websites, disallow any file downloads and generate activity reports for each user.
Step 5
Download and install a third party tracking program if you feel as though your teen is savvy enough to bypass some of the restrictions. The decision of whether or not to track your child's usage is not an easy one, and figuring out if you want to do it surreptitiously or with your child's knowledge is tougher still. Every situation is different. Many parents find that being up front with their kids at the beginning is the best course rather than having them find out later you've been looking in on them.
Step 6
Set up the new tracking software with the restrictions you've decided upon. Most products offer a few different ways to stay up to date on your child's activity. Symantec, the antivirus software maker, has a product called Norton Online Family that will e-mail you about potential problems or let you check in at the Online Family website. Most programs also have the ability to log instant message conversations.
Things You'll Need
- Third-party tracking software (optional)
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