Sure, at a certain age, it’s good idea to protect children from the dark corners of the Internet. You can do that by maybe blocking offensive websites or building his (or her) interests in outdoor sports or anything but stealing from your kid. They won’t trust you after!
Also, once they grow older into their teens? You’re only lying to yourself. They know everything already. Treating your kid smart and honest is much more effective than using kid gloves and doing something duplicitous as trying to steal their passwords. Blocking certain websites, fine. Stealing passwords, too much. Trust that you’ve raised a good kid. [NBC News via Geekosystem]
Martin
Monday, February 21, 2011 at 1:36 PMhere is a crazy idea, SUPERVISE your kids while they are on the internet. dont make it someone elses reponsibilty, cause it isnt and your lying to yourself if you think it is.
if your kids are doing something you dont know about, learn about it. Its not up to the schools to teach them good practices it should be coming from parents.
Whatever happened to actually teaching kids about privacy of information, everyone posts everything on the internet these days and then wonders why they got robbed.
Aaron
Monday, February 21, 2011 at 2:08 PMFacebook was supposed to have an age restriction but I don’t think anyone applies it. I’ve got an 11 year old and a 9 year old who both asked for Facebook accounts as all their friends have them, mostly for gaming and photo sharing.
The rules in our house is basically that Dad is China, I have full control and everyone’s passwords written down and if I think it’s been used inappropriately it gets shut down. It’s the only way it’s going to work, not just to protect my kids online, but also to teach them to be accountable for anything they post.
Steeeve
Monday, February 21, 2011 at 3:57 PMThat’s a lot better system then stealing your kids passwords without their knowledge. An open and transparent system breeds trust for all parties.
LÜ1G1
Monday, February 21, 2011 at 2:22 PMmaybe parents should have an open dialogue with their kids about what they do online. Become FB friends with your children and supervise them that way. Spend time with your child while they are online and learn what websites and games they are interested in.
Spend half as much on your child and twice as much with them.
Steve Tran
Monday, February 21, 2011 at 7:43 PMI’m sure this is great for that whole ‘trust’ thing in parenting eh?
Monitoring your kids’ facebook habits is intrusive and creepy as hell. Remember when FB required an ‘edu’ email address to register and it was all adult students? Before everyone and their great auntie jumped on board? Shame.