Build the Framework for a Safer Environment


It's useful to have a strategy for your implementation and ongoing guard-ian-ship of your family's online safety. There are three elements you can use to create a safer environment online or offline: educate, provide infrastructure, and enforce. This is like a three-legged stool that requires all the legs to support your safety.

Educate

It's important to have a frank and open discussion about both the benefits and potential risks involved in the use of online products, and refer to the chapters in Part Two of this book as needed. Cover both the potential for risks to your children and the potential risks to family or friends, keeping these points in mind:

  • Discuss how your children's friends might place them at risk. (See more on negotiating safety with friends in Chapter 9, "Step 6: Reduce Your Vulnerability When Blogging.") Teach them that they have to look both ways when evaluating potential pitfalls because it is not only what they post, but what others might post about them or how others might use their information that can unintentionally place everyone in harm's way. Point out that publicly posted information is searchable by anyone, so the belief that no one will figure out their URL is very naïve. (Note: Some social networking sites have modified their policies so that minors' information will not be searchable, and you should require this of any service your child wants to use.)

  • Talk about cyberbullying and inappropriate contact by strangers. Assure your children that they can come to you if there are any problems. Also make it clear that they themselves should never become bullies, as this is unacceptable behavior that can also be criminal. (See Chapter 16, "Step 13: Act to Avoid Harassment and Bullying," for more about online harassment.)

  • Teach kids how to make safe trade-offs. For example, if your child wants to have a blog, walk through the choices available. Consider the safety and privacy policies of various sites, understand the level of protection they provide, and choose one that fits best with your personal views on safety. Identify those individuals your child wants to share information with, and then you can map that to what kind of information is appropriate to share. If they want to share only with close friends and family, they can share almost whatever they want without increasing their risk. Their friends already know what they look like, where you live, and how to contact your family. If they want to share their blog or social network with the public, you should help them understand what information is okay to make publicly available and what's not. Public blogs require that you provide more supervision, as it takes some training to really understand how people inadvertently leak their personal information.

  • Understand the exposure your profile gets. Help kids understand that even if the public cannot see their blog without their (or your) permission, the public can often view their profile page. Help kids learn what information is okay to post publicly by asking this question: If you wouldn't share the same information or images with a stranger who approached you for this information on the street, would you share it with potentially the creepiest person on the Internet?

  • Understand that anything posted on the Internet can live forever. All too many people have already had cause to regret some of what they've posted online. Don't post negative images of others. Consider how you would feel if that explicit or even suggestive image showed up in your grandmother's e-mail, on your wedding day, at your job interview, or at your college entrance board review. Be careful about what you enter in any forms. Did you answer "Yes" on the survey where it asked have you ever shoplifted? Did drugs? Stalked someone? Went to school/work drunk? Whether you answered seriously or not, that information, if publicly available, might come back to haunt you.

Provide Infrastructure

Examine what safety options you need to help protect everyone, and discuss how to build an environment for providing safety while allowing as much independence as appropriate. The need for infrastructure will vary from one family to another and from one child to another.

You might want to consider the following suggestions as you build your safety infrastructure:

  • Familiarize yourself with family-friendly safety software (often called parental controls). Discuss the options within content filtering tools and what types of content you feel should be blocked or warned against. Set the content filters on your search engine to a level you are comfortable with. Look for solutions that allow you to define your content and safety preferences and not just ones that force a set of restrictions on you. The software and services you use need to be able to reflect your values and be easy to customize.

  • Agree upon the services and products that you will use. Base this on children's ages and family values, and what safety settings you feel need to be in place. Should your child have limited feature access? Full access? Public or private access? Should parents manage the buddy list or review the list periodically? Should you check what's going on only if there's a problem? Have you created a safe environment so that your child feels comfortable notifying you of a problem?

  • Negotiate an agreement about the amount of time spent online, as well as specific amounts of time spent with different products and services. This might be a combination of game console time, instant messaging time, computer time, and so on.

  • Just as with the TV, consider boundaries for Internet use. For example, you might allow your children to be online before or after doing homework, and only until 9:00 p.m.

  • Evaluate where the computer and game console are placed in your home. If they are kept in bedrooms, safety settings need to be a bit stronger because you will have less ability to view online interactions and usage.

  • Consider what cell phone features are appropriate. This is especially important because there is little safety monitoring for these devices today, yet cell phones are becoming so advanced that they really are like portable and private personal computers. You might not want to purchase a cell phone for your child that has capabilities beyond your comfort zone to understand or adjust settings for.

  • Know what other access your child has to the Internet. Find out what computer safeguards are utilized by your child's school and the public library, and at the homes of your child's friends.

Once you have held these discussions with your family, it's a good idea to have everybody sign on the dotted line by agreeing to a family contract. This documents what you've agreed to, and makes it easier to discuss situations that vary from the agreement because you already have a concensus about appropriate behavior. Figure 17-1 shows a sample family contract you can modify for your specific situation.

Figure 17-1. A sample family contract


Enforce

Establish the level of ongoing oversight and potential consequences if the family agreement is broken. Having clearly negotiated consequences can both help deter any urge to go around the system and make implementing the consequences less likely to cause an argument. Consider these suggestions:

  • Set expectations that you will periodically review your children's Internet experience with themand follow through.

  • What happens if someone tries to circumvent the safety tools, tries to access a blocked site, surfs at inappropriate times, or spends too much time online? Define the consequences and make sure the whole family knows them so there are no surprises.

  • What will be the consequences if you find out your child is being a cyberbully?

  • What happens if your child's social networking site is exposing information that might place them, the family, or friends in harm's way? Do you forbid access? Does supervision increase? Do you pull back from a public to a more private setting? Only you can decide what is right for you and your family.

  • How much oversight is enough to ensure safety, and at what point does that oversight become invasive? Again, the answers will be based on age, maturity, and family dynamics.



Look Both Ways. Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
ISBN: 0735623473
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 157
Authors: Linda Criddle

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