That children love going online using ; mobile phones, tablets, computer etc is no news, what makes this a bit worrisome is how to keep them off online pornography. From social media sites such as; facebook, twitter, instagram , youtube, etc , photos and videos of women and men indulging in sexual orgies abound. When I am going through my facebook , in search of interesting stories to read and my kids come hanging around, trying to look for anything of interest to read or watch, I feel very uncomfortable and ask them to leave. Because while I am scrolling through there are always pornographic photos and videos on the way, which I will not want them to catch a glimpse of.
The internet offers great and wonderful things, how do you allow your child gain access to them without exposing them to pornography?
My opinion is that, Firstly parents have to tell themselves the truth. One of which is…. More than sixty percent of the sites on the internet are pornographic, the very reason they cannot allow their children to go there unsupervised.
Safenet general statistics on pornography and the internet says:
- 60% of all websites on the Internet are pornographic websites (about 1.2 billion).
- As many as 1 in 4 children who use the Internet regularly, will be exposed to unwanted sexual material, including photos of nude people. –taken from Fires Of Darkness.
- The most dangerous aspect of the Internet is its use by pedophiles. Child molesters and predators, who use the Internet to pose as youngsters themselves to communicate with other children, expose them to pornography and arrange to meet them in person. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that one in five children, age 10-17 who regularly use the Internet have received a sexual solicitation while online.
–taken from National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families (NCPCF). - There are computer bulletin boards set up specifically for the seduction of children. They lure kids in with games and establish relationships with them on-line. Then they arrange to meet face-to-face.
- Chat rooms and instant/private messages are two main tools pedophiles use to contact children on-line.
- When your child enters a chat room, they have a 100% chance of coming in contact with a sexual predator. 100% CHANCE! The average contact takes 60 seconds. Often it is a predator.
- 2-4 weeks is the average time it takes for a child to be lured into a personal contact by someone OFF the Internet.
- Child molesters often use pornography to seduce their prey, to lower the inhibitions of the victim and to serve as an “instructional manual”.
- As of September 2000, children were spending 65% more of their time viewing pornography sites then they did on game sites.
- 85% of kids surveyed said their parents didn’t know what they did on the Internet.
- An estimated 70% of all pornography ends up in the hands of children.
- The average age of first use for boys is 11 and girls 13
From the above statistics, how do you as a parent monitor your kids each time they go online?
Susie Mesure highlighted the following checklist for children in different age group in her article “From Bullying To Pornography”
Checklist for children in age group five suggest:
• Keeping devices including mobile phones and tablets out of your children’s reach, as well as setting pins and password that are unknown to them.
• Play the games and online films your kids intend to play first, before allowing them play or watch them. Also check the age ratings and description on apps.
• Avoid using technology as virtual baby sitter too often.
• Set your homepage to something appropriate. For instance CBeebies .
Checklist for agers Six to Nine.
Create a user account on the family computer with appropriate Parental Controls and tools such as Google Safe Search.
Give them list of websites they’re allowed to visit and the kind of personal information they shouldn’t reveal online (such as their school or home address).
Set time limits for your kids as to when they are allowed on internet and playing on games consoles.
Monitor what older siblings show them online.
Don’t be pressured by young children into letting them use certain technologies if you don’t think they’re old enough. Talk to other parents about this, they can give you useful suggestions.
Get familiar with age ratings on games, online TV, films and apps to be sure your child is accessing only age-appropriate content.
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Checklist From ages 10-to-13s
* Some tech boundaries should be put in place before they get their first mobile or games console.
* Talk to them about what they post and share online: written comments, photos and videos are all part of their digital footprint, and could live on the web forever.
* Discuss the kind of things they see online, even, and especially, porn.
* Stop your children from signing up for a Facebook profile or YouTube page before they’re 13, which is the minimum age.
* Remind them that they shouldn’t do anything online that they wouldn’t do face to face.
From 13-plus
* Chat with them about exploring issues related to their health, wellbeing and body image online.
* Discuss with them what they post online and their behavior towards others. Don’t shy away from tricky chats about porn, bullying and sexting.
* Let your son or daughter control their own budget for things such as apps and music but be strict about how much they can spend.
* Discuss things such as downloading and plagiarism so they know what’s legal.
* Adjust the settings on Parental Controls in line with your son or daughter’s maturity.
* Accept that eventually their life is their own and they need a degree of privacy to live it. Vow to stop rummaging through their Facebook page.
Source: ‘Digital Parenting’ magazine, published by Vodafone
Here How TO KEEP YOUR KIDS SAFE ON THE INTERNET By safeNet.
Check if someone is accessing pornography, or generally where they’ve been on the Internet using cookies.
A cookie is a little piece of code that is sent from a website, to your computer and stored in your windows files. They store database information, custom page settings, or just about anything that would make a site individual and customizeable. Cookies are very much like a laundry “claim-check” of sorts. You drop something off, and get a ticket. When you return with the ticket, you get that same something back. Cookies can be purged daily, If you do not want anyone to see where you have been or what you are doing online, Parents can use this cookie file to check to see what web sites have been visited.
Here’s how….
• Open Windows Explorer
• Scroll down to Folder Named WINDOWS and click on the “+” button to open it (or double click on it)
• Scroll down to the folder that says, “Cookies”. Double Click on it to open it. On the right side of the screen it will list a number of cookies. If you have never purged your cache, there will be quite a few cookies. Hover over each icon on the right side of the screen and it will give you the name of the cookie, for example: default@tripod[1] Type: Text Document Size 82 Bites. So now you all know that someone visited a site hosted on tripod. If you hover over a few, you will begin to see a pattern. If most of yours are msn, yahoo, tripod, etc. You will know if one is out of the ordinary by the name.
• Scroll down to the History folder. Double click on the folder to open it, and if you save more than one day on your computer, just choose a folder and double click on it. All the websites visited in that time frame will be displayed on the right side of the pane.
• Lastly, scroll down to the Temporary Internet Files and double click on it again. This is another place where cookies are stored on your computer, and you can see who is collecting information about you, and what websites have been visited.
If you open these files, and they are empty, that means that someone else knows how to check these files and is manually emptying them. Ask why they are emptying them. Clearing your files more than once a month is overly tidy and would be suspicious.
We cannot completely shield our children from dangers such as, internet pornography out there, but we should try our very best to shield them, using the above suggestions and any other suggestion we find very helpful.