subject: Parental Internet Filters - 3 Ways to Protect Your Children Online [print this page] Parental Internet Filters - 3 Ways to Protect Your Children Online
One of the worst feelings a parent can experience is when their son or daughter is exposed to inappropriate material on the internet. The effects of that exposure could actually last a lifetime. Parents could feel a sense of failure or ineffectiveness in protecting their children online. One of the best ways to shield your home computer from adult content is to work with parental internet filters. Here are three ways that filtering software put parents in the driver's seat.
Blocking Thousands of Sites
It would take a very long time to figure out all the websites young kids might come across when searching for something on the web. Trying to make a list of all the sites a teenager might actively look for can also be incredibly time-consuming. Most site blocking programs make it very easy to lock out thousands of website addresses at once. Those programs also offer the ability to update constantly to keep up with all the new sites that pop up every single day. Keywords can also be entered as a guide to filtering out even more sites that may be deemed unsuitable for the family that do not fit the category of pornography, such as gambling.
Control of Social Networking
A growing number of parental internet filters offer the ability to limit or completely block chat rooms or social networking sites. Mom and dad can rest easy knowing that an online predator will have much less opportunity at contacting their kids and exploiting them. Many content blockers also provide a way to limit the amount of hours or the specific time of day or night that those sites can be accessed, or even when the internet itself can be used. This can be a powerful tool in setting the parameters of internet use in the home.
Tracking of Internet Use
"It's ten o'clock, do you know where your kids are?" This used to be a question that referred to places teens might be at during the late hours of the night. Now kids can be anywhere in the world through the internet. Very good parental control software can track and log every site a teen or young child visits. Some of the more sophisticated programs can even provide screen shots of those pages seen so that a parent knows exactly what their child is looking at. Now mom and dad can make a strategic and well-informed decision on how to use the software to protect the family from unwanted content or access from the internet.
In looking for a good filtering program, parents should make sure the software can block a vast amount of websites, limit or block access to social networking, and have the ability to log in detail history of visited sites. These three tools alone will greatly increase a parent's ability to keep their kids safe from adult content invading the home, and decrease the chance of feeling violation when their child is exposed to inappropriate material online.
