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Who should monitor children’s activity on the Net: parents or ISPs?
‘What is everyone’s opinion on the monitoring of Internet activity with children? Is it the parent’s responsibility, or the provider’s? What is your reasoning?’ --iVillager reisu
For the most part, if you feel your only recourse is spying, then you are too late. If you feel you have to spy on your children when they go the shops to see if they are shoplifting, for example, then you should realise that you missed your chance to sit them down, explain right from wrong, and trust they will do what’s right once they are out of your sight.
Granted, the temptation on the Internet is a bit harder to avoid, since it’s literally at your fingertips, but you will need to do your job as a parent early on to instil the right guidelines for them to follow.
If you have had a talk with your children, if you have sat down and surfed shoulder to shoulder with them, if you’ve moved the computer out of their bedroom and put it in the living room, if you’ve already set up parental controls, and if you are still worried that they are doing inappropriate things and they won’t talk to you about it, then monitoring their keystrokes may be your only recourse.
But it’s a last resort, something to use to help you parent your child, not to trap them in trouble. Use it to keep them out of trouble. We spoke to a developer of Chatminder who says that programme’s real purpose is to monitor the ‘conversation’ of the other people in the chat room, not to monitor your kids.
The developer says it’s a way to ensure that people aren’t asking inappropriate questions (‘What is your real name?’ ‘What school do you go to?’) If they are, it’s a record for you to use to report them to the authorities.
For more insight, go to Child Friendly ISPs
Why not chat to other iVillagers about the internet on the Parenting - Polls & Debates message board. Take a look at some of the LIVE discussions happening now on the board:
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