Risks

Sadly there are many risks to children online.  However, these can be reduced through a combination of technology (see Protect children from online threats) and good parenting.  Without proper care, the risks include:

• Inadvertent exposure to violent or sexually explicit images.
• Solicitation by sexual predators in chat rooms and by email.
• Online bullying or harassment.
• Piracy of software, music or video.
• Disclosure of personal information.
• Spyware and viruses.
• Excessive commercialism: advertising and product-related websites.
• Illegal downloads, such as copyright-protected music files.

Think ahead

• Understand the risks yourself and plan ahead before allowing children access to the internet.
• Decide, agree and communicate what your children can and cannot do online.
• Consider signing a computer use contract with your children.
• Work out how you are going to monitor their internet use.
• The boundaries you set and the kind of conversations you have with your children will depend on their age and technical ability as well as your judgement as parents.
• These factors will change as they grow up and should be reconsidered regularly.

Guidelines for children’s use of the internet

You need to agree ground rules for your children’s use of the internet.

The objective is not only to establish boundaries but also to help children understand the reasons why these rules exist so that they can take responsibility for their own actions and develop their own judgement.

We suggest that you:

• Set limits on when they can use the computer and for how long.
• Agree what types of sites are permissible and which are not.
• Encourage them to come to you if anything online makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened.
• Make it very clear that they must not give out personal information without your permission. In particular, addresses, phone numbers, school details, passwords or pictures.  Also take care to limit children's access to credit card and bank information.
• Warn them to be careful about giving away their email address in chat rooms or when registering for sites.
• Forbid them to meet anyone in person that they encounter online without your consent and without a responsible adult present.
• Agree what types of sites are permissible and which are not; for example you may make a policy of not allowing them to use un-moderated chat rooms or to use file sharing programs.  
• Restrict their ability to download software, music or other files without your permission.
• Agree whether (or not) they are allowed to spend money online. Although you might not give them your credit card, if you have already stored your details at an online store it may be easy for children to spend you money if you don't take steps to limit their access or agree ground rules.
• Explain what viruses and spyware are, what you are doing to prevent them and ask them to come to you if they get an alert while online.
• Research age-appropriate internet sites that you can suggest to your children.

Discussion points

It is important that children understand the nature of the internet. Consider discussing the following points with your children.

• People online are not necessarily who they say they are and bad people can sometimes appear friendly and good.
• How to weigh up information found online and how to spot the difference between fact and opinion.
• How to use online resources with homework.  It’s okay to research online but simply cutting and pasting information is cheating.
• The nature of internet piracy – downloading music, television, films, games and other software. Just because the internet makes it easy, it doesn’t make it right (see Be careful with peer-to-peer file sharing).
• How you expect your children to behave towards other people while they are online. Explain that gossiping, bullying etc. are unacceptable.
• Talk to your kids about online pornography and direct them to good, age-appropriate sites about relationships and sexuality.
• Talk about advertising and how it affects you. The American Public Broadcasting Service has a good website that can help you and your children explore the issue.
• The Know IT All for Parents CD Rom has a really great family agreement which parents can use with their children to agree their safe use of the Internet as a family. 

Monitoring children’s behaviour online

• For younger children, always sit with them while they are online.
• Ask your children to share all their online user names and passwords with you.
• Set Internet Explorer to limit access to inappropriate content. To do this: go to the Tools menu and click Internet Options. Select the Content tab and then click Enable under Content Advisor.
• Encourage your children to share their internet experience with you and make it a shared family experience.
• Put the computer in an open area in the home rather than in their bedrooms.
• Consider installing Internet monitoring software to track what they do online.
• Consider installing Internet filtering software that may block access to some unacceptable sites or only allow access to sites you have approved (see Internet content filtering).
• Ensure that your children use only monitored chat rooms on reputable kids’ sites.
• Set up a limited user account on the family computer that restricts what they can do without your permission (see Sharing a home computer).
• Don’t rely on a single technical solution. Supervision and education are also part of good parenting.
• Use an up-to-date web browser with a built-in pop-up filter to prevent unwanted adverts appearing onscreen.
• Set Internet Explorer’s start up web page to point to a kid-friendly home page. Go to the Tools menu, select Internet Options. On the Generaltab, under Home page, type the address of the chosen site.

Parental Control Software

You can use Parental Control Software to monitor, control and restrict access to the Internet keeping your children safe even when you're not at home.

In addition to the Internet filtering and third party Internet monitoring software mentioned above, there are parental controls built into Microsoft's Windows 7, Windows Vista and Apple's OSX Snow Leopard.  These built in controls help parents determine which games their children can play, which programs they can use and which websites they can visit - and when.  Parents can restrict computer use to specific times and trust that Parental Controls will enforce those restrictions, even when you're away from home.

• More information on Microsoft's Windows 7 Parental Control Software.
• More information on Apple's OSX Parental Control Software.