I recently spoke to a group of elementary and middle school parents. We had so much to discuss, the session ran significantly overtime. Many didn’t leave until close to 10:30 pm on a school night! Clearly, we’re all passionate about figuring out how to make the joys of technology trump the dangers, but sometimes it’s really hard to do. And with a group of parents like this one, there’s a big range of knowledge about the various online issues, the methods and technology available to help and how to use it. So most of the time, I felt more like a referee helping the other parents educate each other which was terrific!
So what were some of the top anxiety producing issues?
Issue: Limiting what harm or changes a child or guest can make on your computer. Solution: Use user accounts to restrict program installations, changes to settings and so on. Can be a defense against malware as well.
Issue: More kids are receiving mean messages in text messages than in email. Solution: check with your cellular/mobile provider to see what options they offer for monitoring messages and blocking particular senders. Additional option: consider applications such as Norton Online Family’s Safety Minder for Android phones which allows parents to keep up with how their children use phones and in our Premier edition, allows access to those troublesome messages.
Issue: Kids using web-enabled devices after hours. Solution: using your router, block access to devices after curfew. Or turn the router off and take it into your bedroom. Or take the devices away when you say “good night.”
Issue: Kids purchasing apps or music without permission on parent account. Solution: use restrictions settings on the devices or don’t share the account password with your children. Here’s one popular company’s restriction settings information.
Issue: Kids using parent devices like work phones as “toy”. Solution: use the password settings to keep unwanted users off the device.
Issue: Kids viewing inappropriate content at video sharing sites. Solution: use account settings to restrict to Safe content and use Norton Online Family to ensure those settings are always used and never changed. Norton Online Family can also block the entire site if the issue continues to be a family concern.