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Ethically Monitoring Your Kid's Net Access
from the j-s-mill-never-had-to-worry-about-this dept.
"She will be using a Mac, so I s'pose Apple's KidSafe is an option, but I'm not really keen on the concept - seems a little too limiting - kinda like going to the library and only having access to the encyclopedias. Any ideas?"
Jamie wanted to add a few comments:
Yes, KidSafe is a whitelist. Basically you'd be allowing access only to a carefully chosen, tiny fraction of the web. It's exactly like going to the library and only being able to look at the reference section.
If that's what you want and that's all your child is ready for, I can't see any problem with this. It's honest because everybody knows what they're getting. When they want out of the sandbox, they'll let you know.
Here are my suggested rules of the road for kids on the internet, basically a 21st century version of "don't take candy from strangers." What do I have wrong, or what did I forget?
For parents:
* Put the family computer in a family room.
* Be prepared for freaky questions about things seen online -- and let kids know they can ask about anything they see.
* Be prepared in case you learn they are looking at things they shouldn't. Not that this will necessarily happen. But if it does, your gut reaction may not be appropriate -- consider what you'll say.
* Along with that annoying "what'd you do in school today?", try the equally annoying "what'd you find on the internet today?"
* If you use spyware to keep track of what your kids are viewing, let them know. If you don't, let them know you trust them! This is a trust step like the first time they ride a bike past the driveway, or spend overnight at a friend's house. It's your judgement when they're ready.
For kids:
* When you chat online, you don't know who's on the other end. Even if you've talked with them for a year, you still don't know!
* A rule: never type your last name or your city. (First name and state are OK.) Or, make up a fake name, that can be "who you are" online!
* A very important safety rule: meeting online strangers may be allowed (but mom or dad will be coming along). If kids promise to ask, parents promise to talk it over.
* When you're looking for something, use the Google search engine. (Among its other benefits, it's the most kid-friendly.) Always start your search with at least three words. Any fewer, and you're probably just wasting your time. Parents can help you learn how to pick three good words.
Put it in the living room (Score:5)
Let go some... (Score:3)
Especially because she's only with them for a couple days they need to let go a little. It's all too easy to think, well, we only have her two days every other week -- then for those two days she's ALL OURS. But that's a messed up way to think about it -- she isn't anyone's, she's herself, she needs some control over her life... like having some input as to what she does from moment to moment, and who she does it with.
This reminds me of the free speech notion -- that by being too restrictive of unprotected speech you can have a chilling effect on protected free speech. Similarly, by being to intrusive about inappropriate material, you can have a chilling effect on a child's curiosity about appropriate but -- to the child -- mysterious material.
Re:squid (Score:3)
My guess is that the reason your parents trust you is that you are trustworthy. I would also bet that either your parents are extremely naive (and lucky), or that you had already shown them from your actions that you could be trusted. My parents never followed me around making sure that I didn't do drugs, or what have you, because I showed them that I was trustworthy. I followed the rules they set, I tried to stay out of trouble, and I was respectful (for the most part).
Most kids that complain about parental controls do so because they are not trustworthy. The real reason that they complain is that their parents are cramping their style. They want their parents to "trust" them, but only because it would give them an opportunity to do something they have been forbidden to do.
So yes, how you react most definitely depends on the child. And sometimes there literally is nothing you can do. Some children turn out great no matter how stupid the parents are, and some children screw up no matter how much you love them and care for them. That's why having the government get involved with raising children is such a bad idea. Children are individuals, and need individual care.
Re:squid (Score:5)
No, the original poster has hit the nail square on the head. Keeping a record of where the child surfed is far better than simply signing up with some CyberPatrol. First of all you get to decide what is appropriate or not for your own children (instead of relying on someone else). Besides, squid at leats gives the child the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't block web sites (unless you tell it to) it merely logs where you have been without blocking off potentially useful parts of the web. It allows you and your child to decide together what is appropriate and what is not.
Parents should know where there children are surfing. The Internet is a fabulous tool, but it is far from benign. If you think that everything out there on the Internet is suitable for 11 year olds, then I pray you never have children.
Watch them... (Score:3)
And then sit down and watch them.
-----------------------------
Re:Duh (Score:3)
My parents checked through the HD everyday looking for jpg, gif, etc. I just made sure to rename all the files something that they wouldn't look for.
Honestly, if they want to do something, they are going to do it. It's like smoking pot. If they want to get high and they don't want to get caught, they are going to be smart enough about it to make sure you never find out.
I say let them surf the web w/o hindering them. Most kids aren't going to just "stumble" across offensive material and I have yet to have someone just hop on IM and message me dirty stuff (although I suggest having her check "male" as her sex -- you are less likely to have teenage boys messaging her)
That's my worthless
Re:squid (Score:3)
Transparency of access AND monitoring is the only ethical and effective answer here. And those are the things you're really after:
- effective transparent access
- ethical transparent monitoring
RalfThe trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Re:Monitor her *and* your usage (Score:4)
When Ghandi was alive, a mother came to see him, child in tow.
"Please tell my child not to eat sugar" the woman said.
Ghandi told the woman to come back in two weeks. Two weeks later, the woman brought her child again. Ghandi looks at the kid and says: "Don't eat sugar."
The woman is stunned. "That's it? I had to go for two weeks just for that?"
"You see," says Ghandi, "Two weeks ago, *I* ate sugar."
Sure, it's just a story and the attribution is probably wrong, but I think it says something worth considering.
I think that kids in general would be more effective at monitoring their parents' surfing habits than the opposite. Are you prepared to have your kids see everything that *you* look at on the web?
And all this talk about having your kids talk openly about what they look at on the web; Are you prepared to talk openly with them about every site or newsgroup you browse? If not, the kid will know that you are being one-sided and insincere. (Kids can *smell* insincerity, just as well as you can...)
IANAP -
Cheers,
Jim
MMDC.NET [mmdc.net]
Re:Duh (Score:4)
It's not the teenage boys that you have to worry about, it's the 40 year old guys who say they are teenage boys.
I'm not against (legal) porn at all. I don't think that if a kid runs across porn on the Internet that it will somehow scar them for life. I also don't think that viewing porn will turn them into some sex-crazed pervert.
I believe those that are scarred or turned into perverts where either predisposed to this in the first place and that if it weren't the Internet it would be some other stimuli that triggered it, or come from an environment so violent and horrible that they where doomed from the start. The same thing holds true with video games not turning kids into homicidal axe wielding maniacs.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that such online activities should be encouraged, in fact they should be strictly forbidden.
However, I see the biggest threat on the Internet is chat rooms and REAL people. The problem there is that it would be very hard to prevent the kids from finding somewhere to chat. With the proliferation of IRC, web based chat, java based chat, not to mention all of the proprietary formats out there, it is almost impossible to either filter or quickly monitor their activities via a log of some sort.
Supervision is the only true answer, and in the real world in a lot of cases this just isn't an option. Unfortunate but true.
The bottom line is that your 11 year old daughter is MUCH safer doing anything she wants on the Internet than going to a mall or the movies by herself or even with friends.
If kids want porn, they'll get it, Internet or not. Trust me, I know!
"Proof" (Score:3)
If I had to pick someone who would be an authority figure on whether women are hurt or offended by porn, who would it be? Why, a prominent leader in the Women's Civil Rights movement, of course. How about Betty Friedan, author of The Feminist Mystique and co-founder of the National Organization for Women? [now.org] Surely nobody can take an AP American History course in high school and not recognize the name; we studied her pretty prominently in my course. And she was not only not against pornography, she actually supported it.
These women are only devalued if they allow themselves to be. In the past, they were certainly undervalued, but that's why the Women's Suffrage and Women's Liberation movements came about. Were the situation as severe as people claim, this wouldn't be a few women who claim to be feminists fighting against porn -- it would be a genuine uprising, led by women's leaders. But it's not. Porn does not make women worthless.
Kudos to Cliff (Score:5)
For the unaware, Cliff was refering to John Stuart Mill, an 18th-century British philosopher who wrote of "the tyranny of the masses," or "the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." Mill was noting that logic and reason were being subverted by emotional arguments that appealed to the masses. It's a elitist perspective, but IMHO it's a very valid observation.
This is exactly what's happening here -- as the Salon piece very elegantly expresses, there is no evidence that porn is harmful or that censorship is helpful. In fact, it seems to me only reasonable to think the opposite. I may be biased -- but I'm a 17-year-old who's seen plenty of porn (please don't take that the wrong way), but I'm not some psychotic, violent madman or a pedophiliac. In fact, I'm first in my high school class (finishing my Junior year within the week), I'm looking at top-teir colleges, and I spent my Tuesday night last week being a productive member of my community by lobbying against an issue before the local township council (I won't get into the details of that, but as long as I'm bragging, I think I'll note that I've also finally hit the karma cap =). To see people claim that I should have all kinds of mental problems is, to be, downright offensive. This categorization is wrong, but the majority of people believe it, and that is reflected by our society.
But I think that a lot of the Slashdot crowd sees the argument put forth in the Salon article -- that censorship does not protect children, but instead leaves them unable to cope with the realities of the outside world. (There's a very enlightened judge who ruled recently that children "cannot be raised in a bubble" -- see the ruling [findlaw.com] for more.) That's why I'm such a fan of peacefire's advocacy.
But I digress. The point is, Mill's quote is the perfect embodiment of the phenomenon we're seeing here -- that is, the popular view that children must be "protected." Unfortunately, as long as the masses remain uneducated, we're fighting a losing battle. I don't know what can be done to counteract this, but I sure it hope somebody else can come up with something, and soon -- before people like me are no longer able to access these things, and are no longer able to realize this common fallacy.
Once again, Kudos to Cliff for showing once again that occasionally the slashdot editors do make very insightful commentaries in and of themselves (especially Jamie, who's written many great anti-censorship articles). Hopefully we've enlightened another person or two today.
Re:Duh (Score:3)
as a parent of two, let me fill you in on a little secret: the only way you're going to know what your kids are up to is to spend time with them. in other words, get off your lazy ass and spend time with them. especially if you only have her 2 days a week. sheesh.
Ah yes, the easy route: flaming. How about instead of just shooting from the hip you come up with something workable? This guy is obviously concerned about his kid, and the only suggetion you can give is "spend more time with them"? Christ, man, that's a given considering the tone of the orginal message.
Oh yeah, and I'm a parent.
Here's my suggestion to the original question: Don't worry about censorware. Just occasionally scan her history, cache, etc., & talk to her in a non-confrontational way about anything you that gives you pause. Censorware usually just pisses kids off and makes them become much better with circumvention than they otherwise would have been.
- Rev.Instead of shielding... (Score:3)
Instead of trying to shield the kids from real life, you should take out two birds with one stone and teach them something about it in the process.
If I ever have kids, I'm going to set up a packet snooping / TA system to figure out exactly what they are doing online, and teach them about the lack of privacy on the Internet from the begining. And when they are smart enough to circumvent my spying with encryption, anonymizers, and mixnets, then they have proved they are smart enough to handle whatever they may see...
&& oskar
Re:squid (Score:3)
And there also is squidblock [hklc.com] for those who want a canned set of "bad" sites to block right off the bat. They build the list from user input. And if you want to, there are any number of proxy log reporting tools out there, too, to generate reports of sites visited.
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Re:hey i have an idea (Score:3)
> i bet you don't like being monitored by feds
> guess who the equivalent is to her
Given that by the time she's 18, the feds will be monitoring everything she does anyways, perhaps it's a good idea to get her used to the idea of Big Brother Watching Her now, before she has to. Better she learn how to "act normal" in front of the folks than in front of the Fed.
(And on the flip side - if she's bound and determined to work her way around the logger, and finds an effective way to do so... more power to her.)
My choice of logging tool: Ethernet sniffer, hooked up to OpenBSD box. OpenBSD box is hooked up to an old dot-matrix printer. Every 15 minutes, a URL is printed in hardcopy, at random. The complete log is stored on the hard drive. The sniffer also logs GROUP and ARTICLE commands on port 119, SMTP headers, etc. but to save on diskspace, drops inbound data on the floor. Basically, your own private Carnivore.
<MODE=BOFH>
...and the logfile is encrypted with Dad's public key. Dad doesn't have to read the log entries to know if the OpenBSD box has been compromised and the logs have been tampered with. All Dad has to do is fail to be able to decrypt the logs with his private key.
</MODE>
Duh (Score:4)
as a parent of two, let me fill you in on a little secret: the only way you're going to know what your kids are up to is to spend time with them. in other words, get off your lazy ass and spend time with them. especially if you only have her 2 days a week. sheesh.
I'm sorry, but.. (Score:5)
"Family Area" Caveat: (Score:3)
Okay, but that doesn't solve everything. Granted, I grew up with BBS's instead of the big bad internet, but file swapping was not unheard of.
The computer was (wisely) kept in the family dining room, and not my bedroom or other "private" place. But I'm sure that... eh... had I wanted to swap some pr0n, I probably could've waited until after my parents went to bed and done all the bad stuff I wanted. Hypothetically, I mean.
So, um, what was that thing about squid again?
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Re:Huh? - it's called "custody" (Score:3)
What kind of question is that? (Score:3)
I take issue with the premise of the question.
It is your ethical duty TO monitor your kids. That is what parents are there to do, monitor, guide, and mold their children. If you AREN'T monitoring them your are failing them.
Now, it is obviously good to build trust with your kids, but it is better for your kids to think your too nosy than to end up dead in a ditch.
I don't know why, but people seem to think that 1. kids are small adults and 2. that parents are supposed to be a built in best friend.
Your kids should respect you. If you treat them like miniature adults that are your best buddy they won't. And you are setting them up for problems.
Today's unsupervised eleven year old is tomorrow's "out of control teen" on daytime TV.
-Peter
Monitor her *and* your usage (Score:5)
Many kids will accidentally go to someplace like whitehouse.com and get the suprise of their life- as long as they understand that is something they should not be looking at- that should be fine, lesson learned, and they know not to go there again. Eventually the kid will see something you find morally troubling- and so will you. Take the time to explain what you think is wrong about things like that. The child needs to know why she shouldn't be browsing something, more than just "bad place- stay away!"
Re:I'm sorry, but.. (Score:5)
Its a Good Thing Most /.'ers Dont Have Kids (Score:5)
I mean there are way worse things to worry about than whether or not you are censoring stuff off of the internet. I mean...why not just allow your daughter to go to an X-rated movie at the age of 11...I mean if you didn't allow it you would be censoring her right? Right?!
A chair? (Score:5)
Re:Porn Harmful? (Score:3)
As the MPAA says Sex and Violence are OK as long as you don't say any naughty words.
Re:Porn Harmful? (Score:4)
Here's what a judge had to say about this recently (Score:4)
-
Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that
they must be allowed the freedom to form their
political views on the basis of uncensored speech
before they turn eighteen, so that their minds
are not a blank when they first exercise the
franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old's right
to vote is a right personal to him rather than a
right to be exercised on his behalf by his
parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid
of the state to shield their children from ideas
of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary
either. People are unlikely to become well-
functioning, independent-minded adults and
responsible citizens if they are raised in an
intellectual bubble.
and a truly precious lineThat's a good, realistic argument from a sitting judge.
Re:squid (Score:3)
Even harder to explain (Score:4)
Since I've never been buggered, nor have I ever pumped iron, I don't know which wastes more time, but they are two activities which aren't really productive in the material sense. There are some people who enjoy looking at such things, and there are people who hate them. But, largely, one may assume that both activities are done because the people who perform them enjoy doing so.
In the end, the objective reason why goatse.cx is worse than Schwarzenegger is because social convention says it's so. What i would tell my own daughter would be something like "it's a man with some kind of mental disease, and the people who put that picture online did it because they thought it would be a good joke. You know what 14 year old boys are like..." (she probably does know)
Parental Hints (Score:3)
Raising a child means being involved in that child's life. There is no ethical or moral problem with parenting your child by monitoring their online use.
I'd suggest you use a proxy that logs all page requests. You can then review the logs and see where the child has been going. You should also correlate the times to dial-up activity (e.g., look at /var/log/messages); if there is a time gap in the web log vs. the dial-up, someone just learned how to bypass your proxy.
Good job. Too bad you don't get her more often.
squid (Score:3)
Re:Check out Spector (Score:5)
Have you ever considered the consequences of seeking complete control of another humam being? A parent's role should be that of a shepard, not a guard dog. If you teach your child to think for himself (or herself) and use common sense, you'll end up with a free-thinking and mature young man or woman.
A controlling, domineering parent will result in nothing but a angry and rebellious child or someone incapable of dealing with life and society in general.
If you feel that you need to surreptitiously spy on your child, I pity you.
Re:What kind of question is that? (Score:3)
I can't agree. Kids need privacy too, kids are entitled to privacy. They need to be left alone to explore things on their own. It might be risky, but that's a chance one must accept for an individual to grow up. However, it is vitally important that the parents are there for them, and that parents understand when they are needed.
Check out Spector (Score:3)
Their older version (2.2) was great. But in some time, they'll be releasing v3.0 which is truly kickass (Take this from someone who is beta-testing it now)
Highly recommend for parents. Note: This doesn't block anything, but rather it LOGS everything.
The parent can then decide what's inappropriate.
One more thing... (Score:5)
Show her you care (Score:4)
Don't censor, educate. (Score:3)
Make sure they are aware of choices, that some do allow and some don't. Make sure they don't violate the choices of their friends parents. Guide them into seeing both points of view.
Parenting isn't easy. Its undoubtably the most difficult job on the planet. Be aware that child minds are incredibly good meme hosts. Seed with lots of interlocking high value memes. Cultivate your child's meme ecology rather than censor it into barreness.
You cannot weed a meme out of a childs mind, and you cannot keep it out forever. Your only hope is to seed it with the competing memes.
Just ask them (Score:3)
Pa: "Hey BOY?!"
John-Boy: "Yeah Pa?"
Pa: "You havn't been going to any of that gay porno on that internet, have ya'?"
John-Boy: "No Pa, I'm only visiting Slashdot."
Pa: "Slashdot? That sounds like gay porno to me"
John-Boy: "No, see pa? Its a place where people have (semi-)intelligent discussions relating to technology, the news, and the law, and how it affects all of us in today's times."
Pa: "Hm...well, I guess that's not so bad. What's that there link that some pussy coward put?"
John-Boy: "Er...that's nothing."
Pa: "Click it!"
John-Boy: "No!"
Pa: "I knew it, this is just another gay porno site!!!"
John-Boy: "No pa! It's not! I swear!"
*Pa takes the mouse and discovers what "goatse" means, and John-boy is whipped for the rest his life*
Er....what was the point of this again? Oh yeah, just ask the freaking kids. Other than that, leave them alone, and let them discover the good and the bad the way the rest of us did. Those of us who held a firecracker in our hands as it blew never did it again, and any boy who ends up in a private chat with "SeXyOlDgUy69" deserves what he's going to get. I guarantee he'll never do it again.
Then you gotta deal with abused trust... (Score:5)
Then one day I get an email from some site saying that they couldn't comply with *my* request to authorize my daughters account for something or other unless via snailmail.
She'd forged an email from me (not hard... it's a family PC running 'doze) and tried to say "I forgot my password. Please authorize....". Luckily the site required snailmail confirmation in that situation.
Needless to say, there was a discussion about responsibility and lying... I let her know that it would be some time before I could trust her fully online again, and oh, yes... she was grounded from the computer for a week, and after that, she was not allowed online for a month without me or my wife literally looking over her shoulder...
Still better than filtering...