Kids and the Net

Like all parents, I have a vague concern about the kids on the net and what they might stumble upon.

When our eldest was about 10, he was desperate to have a Hotmail account. I only had a work email so wasn’t particularly au fait with it, so after weeks of pester-power and obviously me banging on about it, a friend at work kindly set one up for him (thanks Aysha!).

I got home and announced he had an account, again, all credit to Aysha – I didn’t even pretend it might have been me. He rushed to his room and logged on.

“Mum?’ he called out, somewhat tentatively. ‘What’s this?’

I sauntered down to his room, thinking it was a small admin problem but on sighting the screen, I picked up my pace to a sprint to close the site. ‘Oh my god, look away!’ I yelled.

It wasn’t too hardcore, but like his sister, his spelling is a tad patchy and typing Hotmale into Google does have predictable results!!

I saw a frightening doco on Foxtel a couple of weeks ago about high school kids and how much porn they’re exposed to on the net. I’m fairly neutral about porn, not my thing but overall for adults, pretty harmless and their choice. But the reporter Googled and within three clicks, and no credit card details required, had explicit child porn thrown up on her screen. The entire film crew was apparently disturbed. I was disturbed just by the one sentence description that’s been haunting me ever since – so I’m certainly not going to repeat it here. But what a wake up call!!

How do you keep them protected from such disturbing imagery? Yes, there are filters, but they’re not on phones. Kids have such ubiquitous access to the net, I’m not sure what the answer is.

Thoughts?