Keep your kids safe online
“Millions of girls using Facebook, Bebo and Myspace ‘at risk’ from paedophiles and bullies”
This is the front page headline from today’s Daily Mail. I am a parent of one of these “millions of girls” who use Bebo, MSN etc, and it is fair to say the content on these sites that pass between users can be shocking to say the least. I won’t go into details here. This is not a scare-mongering article! As parents, we know we have a duty to supervise our children, both in the real and the “cyber” worlds. However, that duty also comes with the realisation that as much as we would like to keep our kids safe from the nasty things that go on, we cannot protect them entirely.
In passing, a couple of years, back I asked my software developer hubby if he could write something which would enable us to monitor our Daughter. This led him to create a programme called ICU (I see you!, clever eh!). This was installed on her machine, and throughout our network, so whenever she was on any computer he would get a “snapshot” of whatever she was looking at, saying, doing or playing. It did not take long to realise that whilst our daughter is still the sweet little innocent we hoped – the same could not be said for the “friends” that send her things and link to her profile from theirs!
This made us think. Do these other parents even know what their kids are doing? Our daughter is lucky because my husband is savvy enough to set up something to look after her. Most parents are not as computer literate. It was this that made him decide to roll out “ICU” and offer it as a tool for all parents to help keep their kids safe online. There are of course, lots of these types of things around, but generally they are complicated – and the parent has to run reports and all that sort of carry on. ICU is dead easy, you don’t have to “do” anything……It is also about a tenth of the price of the others. (Ideally, it would be free, but anyone even running a small website knows there are costs involved.)
It is also a fact that if your kids know you are watching them, they are much more likely to monitor themselves and what they do! They are more likely to act like they would if you were stood over their shoulder!
Like I say, there are others around. But from one parent to another I want to let as many people as possible know that we are NOT fighting a losing battle on this, and there are things we can do. Here are some links for you to have a look at. See if they would work for you. One is my hubby’s, the other is a similar type of thing. One of them might be just what you are looking for.
Regards, Suzanne
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