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Your Children and the Internet
 Now that school has started it's a good time to examine how you monitor your children's usage of the Internet. Citynet strongly advises parents to educate themselves and their children about the very real dangers lurking on the Internet. We’ve all read about child stalkers and peddlers of pornography. Everyone with young children at home needs to have some form of Internet site blocking.
Below are some helpful safety tips for protecting your kids when they are online.
Use an Internet filter.
An Internet filter will run in the background on your computer while your kids are surfing the Internet. It filters pornographic and other offensive content, monitors each surfer's online journeys, blocks access to certain web sites and newsgroups, keeps kids out of the questionable chat rooms and logs their online activities.
If possible, keep the computer in a visible place in the house.
Ask questions. Walk by and check what is on the screen. If your child quickly closes the screen, this is a red flag and should be investigated.
Spend time on the Internet with your children.
Go online with your children as often as possible and help them identify inappropriate communications. Give them a chance to show you what they have learned or the things they like. Send E-Greetings and Christmas cards to family and friends or participate in interactive games together. Ask your children to tell you about their cyberspace friends, just as you would want to know their real-life friends.
Schedule Internet use for your children.
Limit young grade-schoolers to 30-60 minutes a few times a week; older kids may need more frequent access for school projects. This will make them more responsible in using the Internet.
Limit your children to only certain websites, newsgroups and chat rooms.
Sit down with your child and agree on types of websites your child may and may not visit. Limit the use of Instant Messaging and chat rooms.
Never give out personal information.
Instruct your kids never to give out personal information (name, address, age, telephone number, password, credit card number, and so on) in chat rooms, email, or bulletin boards. Be aware that Web sites for children— even the most reputable ones—sometimes ask for e-mail and home addresses, telephone numbers, and parents’ professions before allowing children to enter.
Stay away from online profiles.
Instruct your kids never to have online profiles, so they will not be listed in directories and are less likely to be approached in children's chat rooms, where pedophiles often search for prey.
Use nicknames instead of real names.
A nickname—an online alias—is also vital to protecting privacy because it conceals a person’s real identity. Consider sharing the same nickname and e-mail address with your children under 14 so that you can closely monitor the instant and e-mail messages that come to them.
Never allow a child to arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they met online.
Instruct children to never arrange a face-to-face meeting with another computer user without parental permission. Never allow them to get together with someone they "met" online without first checking this “friend” out to the best of your ability. If a meeting is arranged, make the first one in a public place, and be sure to accompany your child. Thus, someone indicating that "she" is a "12-year-old girl" could in reality be a 40-year-old man.
Randomly check their Web browsing history.
Viewing the log of visited web sites can give you enough information about your kid’s habits, interests and online friends. Normally you should do this only occasionally but if your child becomes secretive, then you should check more often. If you find that the history of sites visited is deleted in your Web Browser, this is a signal that something is going on and should be investigated.
Teach children be careful with e-mails from people they do not know.
Instruct your child never to open emails, especially with attachments, from people they do not know. Most likely these emails contain a computer virus or they are mass mailing (spam) e-mails with inappropriate content.
Report Internet Abuse
If you become aware of the transmission, use, or viewing of child pornography while online, immediately report this to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline at 1-800-843-5678.
The Internet is a great place for kids. By applying real-world parenting skills and remedies to the wired world, you can make the Internet a safe place for your child to learn and play. The more time you spend with your children, the more rewarding the whole experience of the Internet can be, and the more their safety is ensured.
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