The American Academy of Pediatrics, that nation’s leading authority on children’s health, recently suggested that all parents use tracking software (another word for filtering software like Safe Eyes) to monitor their children’s online activity.

The article, Guidelines for making children’s online experience safer, recognizes dangers such as online predators, cyberbullying, and identity theft, and outlines several strategies for meeting these cyber-dangers head on. Some of their recommendations are:

• Surf the Web with your children, especially those under the age of 10.
• Put the computer in a central area like the den or kitchen to make it easier to monitor online activities. Computers should never be placed in a room where a door can be closed or a parent excluded.
• Use tracking software to monitor what Web sites children are visiting.
• Visit sites that children and teenagers go to like MySpace, Club Penguin and Facebook and understand how they work.
• Limit screen time to no more than two hours a day, which includes computer usage, television watching and video game playing. The less children are online, the lower the risk of them coming across dangerous material.

The last bullet is especially important as different forms of media take up more and more of our time, and not just for children but adults as well. As wonderful as the Internet is, too much of anything can be a bad thing. That’s why we designed Safe Eyes with time limits that can be set for each individual user.

Another thing this article does well is cement that filtering and good parenting work together. Too many parents see installing a filter as a substitute for good parenting, or good parenting as a substitute for a filter. The truth is neither work very well without the other. Using a filter to reinforce the agreements your family has made regarding Internet use is both good parenting and smart technology.

Filed under: Internet Safety News