Child Safety and Online Dangers

What can we say about children these days? Polluted television, corrupted Internet sites, contaminated video and board games, and a world lowering its standards, values, and morals each day surround our children.

What’s worse we cannot use Parental Controls anymore to keep our children away from websites in adult nature. Children nowadays are advanced in technology, and sometimes more so than parents. How can we protect our children against online dangers? How can we as parents provide safety to our children, while battling the corruptions going on worldwide?

Parental Controls are available through most Internet software’s, yet today, children are skilled at passing these Parental Controls. What can we do? We can guard our children by monitoring their activities closely on the Internet.

How to use parental controls:
It depends on which Internet provider you have, however, I will speak only of the Internet providers I am aware of, since all programs are different. To use AOL Parental Controls you will need to go to Safety at the Toolbar and click on Parental Controls. Once you arrive, you will see a list of usernames available. Search for your child’s username and click on the username. You will see a popup window appear. Click on Edit Web Control and then click Kids Only, and close. Now your child is guarded against scavenging sites that hold potential dangers.

The Chat rooms pose serious threats against children, since anyone can go into these rooms, and often predators frequent this area, so as to lower children into a web of danger. In the AOL program, click Safety and then click Parental Controls. Next, following the same steps Click on the Edit IM Controls, Edit E-mail Controls, and Edit Chat Control, and follow the same steps as you did to setup the Parental Controls.

It is wise to setup passwords. Passwords will offer additional protection and safety to your child. Do not give the child passwords, since this will give the child control of your Internet connections, and the child, might out of curiosity, reset the controls. 

Using your Popup Controllers is wise also, since if you do not turn on the controls, pop ups could corrupt your system, or popup adult content, in which your child will see if online. You can go in AOL Safety at the Toolbar to set these popup guards.

If you are using Internet Explorer, open a page. Click on Tools at the top menu, click Popup Blocker, and then click Popup Blocker Settings. Read the information carefully and set the program at medium. Medium is standard and will block most pop ups. If you set the settings higher than medium you might find it difficult to open websites for browsing.

Some of the dangers online posed to children include, Internet Porn, Harms from Porn, Child Porn, Online Predators, Child Sexual Abuse, Mobile Porn, and more. As you can see, your child is at serious risk, and if you want to master safety, it takes you to monitor, and take the steps to safeguard your child against online dangers. 

According to recent studies, students have encountered sexual deviations through webcams, instant messengers, and mobile phones. Additional studies show that pornographic websites out rate CBS, ABC, and NBC, thus making more profit than these television programs alone make in a year. The studies claim that most groups that view porn sites are children. The children are between the ages of twelve and seventeen.

The statistics showed that around 74% of the porn sites had unmonitored banners, while another 66% of the sites did not issue adult content warnings. Yet, another 11% of the sites did not have sexual explicating content warnings, and 25% mousetrapped the visitors, by not allowing them to leave the sites…another 3% of the sites were the only online sites out more than 14 millions adult sites, requested adult permission. Protect your child now!