Guiding Young Minds

Posted by Ken

Children, young and old alike, are curious by nature. They’re always trying to discover something about themselves and the world around them. Put them on the Internet and you’ve got the proverbial “kid in the candy store”.

Feeding a child’s curiosity is important, in my opinion. In fact, it’s good for us parents to be curious, too. But we need to make sure we know what we’re feeding that curiosity lest we end up with a kid who’s eaten all the candy and crying over a tummy ache.

We have to remember that the Internet works both ways. Information comes into your home and sometimes it goes out, and it may not always be when or to where you think. People with fraudulent intentions can masquerade as someone you’ve done business with before inquiring about your account (”Mr. Jones, would you mind verifying your credit card information as our server went down recently.” Yeah sure). Or perhaps you’ve heard of the e-mail scams that play on your heart strings to get you to send money to victims of some disaster, when it’s really going to finance something else.

And it may not be you they’re targeting. Consider the possibility of your child getting an e-mail from someone that entices them to download something for free. Or what about being asked to provide information about themselves or family members. The child wants to do the right thing by helping and may not see anything wrong with acting grownup.

So that we provide the proper supervision, it’s critical that we take the time to get involved with our kid’s online time. Here are a few tips that should help you ease your way into the situation while you both learn something:

Do some online research together. Maybe you’re shopping for a gift for Aunt Maggie, or planning a family vacation and want to find some place to visit–it doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re teaching your child safe surfing habits and exposing them to the brighter side of the Web. This way, they could be more sensitive to the darker side of things and alert you when they feel uncomfortable.

Explain to your child(ren) that just like there are bad people that lurk on the streets, so too are the same sort of people online. And it’s because they’re online that they can seem even more convincing because they can pretend to be virutally anybody.

If it’s not already, put the family computer in a well-trafficed area. This will make it easier for you, the parent, to see what’s going on, and less likely that they’ll attempt going somewhere online that they shouldn’t.

Check your Web browser’s history. By pressing the Ctrl+H keys, you’ll call up a log of sites that have been visited. Keep in mind that kids today are pretty computer savvy and may know how to clear the history, but at least now you know.

Avoid having your Web browser remember usernames and passwords. And if this information is already saved in your browser, go to the “options” or “preferences” menu item and clear what it has remembered.

Communication is so important! If anyone, child or adult, doesn’t feel comfortable speaking to you, they’re not going to do it, or if they do, they may be tempted to omit some facts. So keeping open lines of communications is good for any activity, online or off.