Technology offers people instant access to an incredible catalog of educational and recreational digital content and experiences. However, the content we want can be only a click or two away from something unwanted, offensive, or even harmful. While adults navigate this diverse landscape sufficiently, allowing kids access to explore is risky. Exposure to the wrong things cannot be unseen.
Because parental controls solutions – included with our devices (e.g., Apple’s Screen Time) and available for sale – can be difficult to use for many parents, kids end-up either over-restricted or under-restricted when engaging the Internet. Additionally, finding a good supply of content for our children and enabling it with our parental controls takes work. This combination of challenges results in our children not benefitting from the tremendous assets available via the Web, at best, and risking harmful experiences at worst.
In this post, we talk about this challenge and Kiddofy’s approach for enabling children to have fun on the Web, learn from amazing resources, and be safe.
What is great stuff? We like content that develops, informs, inspires, or that is simply fun. More and more, we refer to these gems as experiences because whether the content is interactive or the experience comes from the child exploring a great website, a kiddo gains more by engaging.
Great children’s websites also do a nice job of disguising developmental experiences as entertainment – just like moms who sneak some spinach into the smoothy for an extra health boost. Take GoNoodle (gonoodle.com) as an example. They blend learning with fun videos, encouraging dancing, singing, and helping to develop a child in multiple ways.
We especially enjoy finding experiences that increase a child’s wonder, help them feel empowered, grow their confidence, or inspire them for more. Whether your child likes music, art, literature (stories), nature, science, sports, or just fun videos and games, it’s all out there.
We’ll make more posts about content, soon. Until then, here are a few examples of Websites for various age levels with experiences we think kids are better off having, along with our profile of each.
We all know that anyone having open access and looking for shady content will find it online within moments. But even children who try earnestly to avoid the bad stuff will have trouble steering clear of exposure and eventually have a bad experience.
It happens in many forms:
A popular approach for preventing access to inappropriate Web content is to block access to a list of known bad sites. While we believe all parents should do this as part of their controls, this alone is not sufficient to keep our children safe, because no list will ever be complete.
Consider:
We’ll talk about each in turn…
To help with this, some solutions also block access to Web pages that contain certain words, such as profanity and terms associated with pornography, hate, or violence. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of inappropriate content that does not contain such trigger words and would not be blocked. Though, if this feature is available to you with your device or parental controls solution, it is another layer of precaution that should be used to improve your chances of preventing access to harmful content.
Easy examples of this are search engines (e.g., Google and Bing), news outlets (take your pick), and video (e.g., YouTube and TikTok) or social media services.
Search engines are indispensable for discovering new content. Unfortunately, they also contain content, including images and video, from the websites they index. This means allowing a child access to a search engine provides them access to most everything online without them having to leave the search engine. This includes, for example, an endless supply of pornography. Note: Safe search settings help and should be used but are not foolproof.
Video services are a wonderful source of fun, educational, and enriching content – music, puppies, sports instruction, cooking, crafts, magic tricks… you name it! Unfortunately, the same services have videos inappropriate for children and user commentary that can also be offensive.
It’s easy for us all to agree that content from these categories – the big three – is inappropriate and should never be within reach of children. Many families are also concerned about, and would like protection from, other types of exposure.
For example… When our kids are at school, on the playground, and otherwise engaging their little part of the world, we use care to avoid exposing them to topics we prefer to teach at home, beliefs contrary to our own, behavior we consider unbecoming, and attitudes that don’t align with our values. Unfortunately, online experiences and personalities also teach our children, set examples, and influence their development.
Things of these sorts we object to would not be blocked by lists of bad websites or bad-word filters. Worse, we parents usually find out about our child’s exposure only after it’s gone on for some time.
Instead of allowing access to everything that hasn’t been blocked, the safest approach is to block access to everything that hasn’t been approved. That is, allow your child access only to websites or pages you trust. This is the strictest control, and it comes with a drawback, but it’s the best way to support your younger children in enjoying the good and avoiding the bad.
The biggest drawback of this approach is the challenge of supply. When we block everything that hasn’t been approved, our kiddos have access only to the websites or pages we add back. Since most parents don’t spend a lot of time searching the Web for great children’s content, our kiddos can end up safe, but still missing out.
Kiddofy was created exactly for this reason and helps in the following ways:
Learn more about Kiddofy’s features here.
Whether or not you use Kiddofy as part of your parental controls solution, the following describes our view of effective Web access controls for kiddos at different ages / stages of development. We hope this helps your family.
(Note: For guidance using Apple’s free controls on your child’s devices, see our blog post: Kiddofy's Guide to Apple’s Screen Time)
In the physical world, we give our children more and more freedom as they grow. We begin with complete control and then gradually balance the risk of bad things happening with the benefits of more experiences and increasing independence. This is also a good approach for online safety.
While there are no hard rules for ages and controls, and all families and kiddos are different, we see children graduating through 3 stages.
This stage is good for kiddos from the earliest age – as soon as you put an Internet-connected device in their hands – and into middle school.
Configure your parental controls to allow access to approved websites only. Be careful which websites you allow. As described above, even valuable sites (such as search engines) can have very bad content. It’s best to allow only websites that are designed for children. They tend to have safer advertising and moderation of user generated content (if any), such as comments.
On some platforms, Web controls such as these are enforced for all apps. On others, they apply only to certain apps or browsers. If your controls are browser specific, be sure your child has access only to the browser that has your controls activated by removing or disabling the others. Beware, some apps that are not browsers may still give access to websites and these should also be removed.
If your controls let you, also activate blocking of hazardous sites (described above). This is a good extra measure that can help when an app you don’t know provides web access outside of your other controls. These multiple layers of protection are known as defense in depth.
For example, if you’re using Kiddofy as your child’s browser, you would use Apple’s Screen Time to disable Safari and set the Web Content Restrictions to Limit Adult Websites. Kiddofy has its own blocked list of websites, but this allows you to benefit from Apple’s as well.
This stage uses the same full controls as Stage 1, with one more consideration. As kiddos advance, there will be times when they would like to explore the Web. Whether for schoolwork or fun, they’ll want to find information, browse videos, or discover new interests on sites that aren’t usually part of their approved websites. For example, they might need access to a search engine, Wikipedia, or YouTube to accomplish their task or satisfy their interests.
To accommodate this, you can temporarily add the websites they need to their approved list and then remove them when they’re done (if you’re using Kiddofy, you can set the approvals to automatically expire, so you don’t forget). The important part is this… Because these websites also contain inappropriate content, parents should supervise their children while they have access. This comes in different forms, depending on the family and available parental controls.
The simplest approach to supervision is to allow your child broader access to such sites only while they’re in the same room with you. Your presence can curb curiosity that might otherwise have them wander somewhere they shouldn’t and, if something dodgy comes up, you can talk with them about it right away.
If your parental controls provide you a history of all web pages accessed by your kiddo (always available with Kiddofy), this is another way parents can supervise. Be sure your child knows that you’re watching their activity from your device and that you’ll talk with them about anything edgy that comes about.
Regardless of which approach you choose, have a discussion with your kiddo prior to their browsing session and explain what inappropriate content is, how to identify it, and your expectations for how they’ll handle an incident, if it comes up. In our family, we ask our children to immediately close the web site and come tell us about what happened. This gives us an opportunity to discuss what they saw, praise them for handling it the way we asked, and it builds trust they’ll handle things correctly in the future.
In our view, Stage 2 is generally good for children in middle school through 9th grade. Again, all children and families are different, and this can be adapted to what works for you.
Quick note: This approach aligns with how many parents handle control and safety in their child’s physical world as well. Imagine when your kiddo wants to walk around the mall with their friends for the first time, leaving you behind. The mall is a relatively safe setting, but there are still risk factors they should be aware of, avoid, and report back to their parents. Parents sometimes choose to be at the mall during their child’s outing (the supervision part), to keep tabs on their behavior and develop confidence their child will follow the guidelines they’ve been given.
That brings us to teens / high schoolers. As the kids get older, they desire more freedom and have a legitimate need for more open access to resources on the Web.
When you’re comfortable that your child can be trusted to avoid the bad stuff online, it’s reasonable to relax the controls. Again, we see this mirrors other parts of their lives as they naturally seek more independence.
To relax the controls, you would switch the mode from blocking everything that hasn’t been approved, to blocking only known bad sites and whichever you’ve added to the block-list on your own. For example, if you haven’t allowed social media, you can configure those sites to be blocked also.
If you’re using Kiddofy, learn more here about Supervised Access with Homework Mode, which helps by giving kids temporary or permanent unrestricted access, while still blocking the bad stuff, and keeping parents in the know with real-time access to their kiddos’ activity history.
For kids of all ages (even the teens), it’s a good practice to keep their internet activity within common areas of the home. Online mischief tends to take place when our curious kiddos have privacy.
Just as we do with other hazardous topics in their developing lives, continue talking with your children about the dangers that exist online and your expectations for their conduct. Praise them for earning the trust that got them to this stage of online freedom and remind them that you will continue to monitor their activity via your controls’ activity history and periodic inspection of their messages, posts, etc. You do this because you love them, and part of your job is to keep them safe.
If you find that they’re making poor decisions, about what they access or their conduct with social media, you can always restrict their freedom by returning them to an earlier stage (above). As parents ourselves, we make sure our kiddos know that Internet access is a privilege, not a right, that can be earned and lost (like video games, driving, etc.).
We hope this helps. It will work best if you adapt it to align with your comfort and what’s best for your family.
Thank you for helping kids enjoy the Internet safely!
Kiddofy for Apple Mac and mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, iPad, and iPad Touch) is available in the App Store, FREE for families!
