Question:
We have some fairly tight parental controls on our AOL (mild teen age content OK for our 13 year old son), but we are finding our son is getting onto internet explorer and visiting sites that are not blocked...how do we prevent him from going outside of our AOL "rules". We try to have him use the internet in our presence, but that does not always happen, and he is sneaky enough to get around our "requirement" to use AOL --he lies about his using internet explorer, yet our daughter said she saw him visiting "porn" and when my spouse looked into the internet explorer, she was right about some sights our son had visited. How do we control that?Answer:
ParentingTeensOnline expert, Renée Hobbs, Ed.D., M.A., is one of the nation's leading authorities on media literacy education. She is a Professor of Communication at Temple University's School of Communication and Theater, where she directs the Media Education Lab, a center for research and community service in media literacy. She has created numerous award-winning multimedia curriculum materials, including My Pop Studio for tween girls. Renée answers:
You can communicate that you're serious about the rules for computer use in your family by confronting him about his actions and getting his response. It's important for kids to realize that if they break the family rules about media use, there ARE consequences. Show him the evidence and get him to acknowledge his behavior. When this happened to us, we turned off the computer and the TV for a week--- and boy, did the kids get the message that our family's rules for media use were serious indeed.
At 13, your son is old enough to know a number of strategies to independently search online himself. Even if you restrict access at home, you can be sure that he'll find ways to investigate what the "forbidden fruit" is all about. Your job is to communicate frankly with him about the questions he has about sexuality. You can talk about why porn is not a good information source, how it can harm people's ideas about the relationship between love and sex, and how it exploits women and men by turning people into objects. Teens are naturally curious about sexuality and the Internet offers a wealth of images and ideas-- good, bad and ugly-- at the touch of a button. In the end, the best monitoring software for a teen boy is his own conscience and that can be activated through authentic conversation between you, your spouse and your son.
For other tips on protecting your kids online, see our articles The Truth About MySpace.com, Tech Talk For Parents and Cyberbullying.