When a toddler is learning to walk, there is usually an adult nearby. In this early stage of a child's physical development, parents seem to be naturals in determining the proper balance - stay close enough to intervene if my toddler is in harm's way, but allow enough freedom for my child to learn how to balance, navigate, and eventually walk with confidence and independence. No doubt, the "wobbling" is always the most anxious time for parents.
Now that your toddler has matured into a tween or teen, your son or daughter may be wobbling all over again. Yet few parents are feeling nostaligic by this sense of deja vu as we watch our children stumble and fall while learning to toddle the Internet. Many parents are asking, "How close is too close, and how safe is safe enough?" As you determine your parental stance regarding Internet safety, think back to your child's toddler stage and remember how progress was made in small steps. First and foremost, your toddler needed support, and so do our tweens and teens when they first learn to navigate the Internet.
Step one: Hold their hand, which means be around and be available. Just as a toddler will attempt to walk when ready, so too will elementary age children gravitate to the computer. I won't go so far as to say it's natural; however, I will say it's inevitable. When those first steps arrive, a desktop computer sitting in a common living space where there is a lot of foot traffic probably makes the most sense. The novice computer user will have problems, technical and otherwise. Anticipate problems, and be available to help your child understand them.
Eventually, you will want to bolster your child’s independence by allowing unmonitored time on the Internet - which leads to Step two: Learn how to use filters that block the most offensive information. In later blogs, I’ll speak more to this. For now, the information below will show you how to strengthen the filter when using the Google search engine. Since Google is where most searching gets done, and since the option is free, why not use it? To the right of the Google search box, click on Advanced Search, and then follow the direction for SafeSearch.
| SafeSearch filtering |
Many users prefer not to have adult sites included in search results (especially if their kids use the same computer). Google's SafeSearch screens for sites that contain explicit sexual content and deletes them from your search results. No filter is 100% accurate, but SafeSearch should eliminate most inappropriate material.
You can choose from among three SafeSearch settings:
- Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; you’ll receive moderate filtering unless you change it.
- Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e., both image search and ordinary web search).
And finally…
- No Filtering, as you’ve probably figured out, turns off SafeSearch filtering completely.
You can also adjust your SafeSearch settings on the Advanced Search or the Advanced Image Search pages on a per search basis.
We do our best to keep SafeSearch as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible, but inappropriate sites will sometimes slip through the cracks. If you have SafeSearch activated and still find websites containing offensive content in your results, please contact us and we’ll investigate it.
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