As a parent, you most likely are always cautiously monitoring the activities and
safety of your children and keep them out of harms way and away from those who what to do your kids harm. With all the child safety issues being brought to light , you can never be sure who is legitimate and who might be a perverted child on line predator.
Putting in place some type of internet block to help your children stay away from inappropriate web content is a good place to begin when allowing your children to surf the web on their own but this will only provide them with a little of the protection they will need. These blocks do nothing to stop interactions that occur on social media websites and internet chat sessions so they only stop what your kids are looking at and not who they are talking to.
Internet predators have already proven themselves to be smart and cunning; but so are your children. They have, along with their friends and social media site members their own code for communicating and many parents haven't a clue about what a conversation is really about. A shared computer in a common area will only show you what the child thinks you want to see; it is usually quite different when they have no one looking over their shoulder.
There is only one thing to do if you have kids who are using the internet whether they are 7 or 17 and that is to install a parental spyware program on their computer. This will help you to keep an eye on who they are talking to and what they are accessing every time they are on the web and when a chat session seems to go a little bit too far you will be able to view it and either discuss it with your child or at the very least open up a dialog about this type of situation so that they can begin to understand.
Every parent at times are tempted to ground their child from using the computer. This however, is becoming harder to do, because of all the other reasons the child will be required to use the computer. It will be used for more than just socializing. Teaching them the correct way to use the computer, early in their computing years, will lay a foundation for good behavior as well as protect their identity and keep sickos and strangers at a safe distance.