While the Internet can be a truly wonderful thing, and it is an amazing tool for students to use for research and other educational activities, there are also a lot of dangers lurking online. While some people think that monitoring children’s activity online is an invasion of privacy, it is actually something that more parents should be doing in order to protect their children from online predators. They can keep track of what their children are doing while they are using the Internet, and block websites that they feel are inappropriate. Some products even allow parents to put controls on how long their children are able to use the Internet.
There are a number of different types of computer monitoring products available to parents who want to be more proactive in their children’s computer usage. The software available allows parents to see everything that their children are doing online. Keystroke recorders are used to record each keystroke a child types, so parents can learn passwords. Children, especially teenagers, are often more proficient with computers than their parents are, and they often try to use password their parents don’t know, and bypass restrictions in order to view inappropriate websites.
Often, children, especially adolescents and teenagers, end up in chatrooms, and while they think they are chatting with their peers, they could be talking to predators who are pretending to be younger in order to gain their trust. Not only should parents be concerned about chatrooms, they should also use computer monitoring products to keep an eye on what their children are doing on Facebook and other social networking websites. It is common for people to have hundreds, even thousands of friends through these websites, and in most cases, they only actually know a small percentage of these people. The rest are virtual strangers.
With so many dangers online, and so many predators out there just waiting to find young people who are using chatrooms and social networking websites, it is important that parents be diligent about monitoring their children’s computer usage. It could even be a matter of life or death.
