Net Family News: Online-Safe Resources for Kids and Families

Online-Safe Resources for Home & School

Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!

Online safety: Our subscribers' (parents') views (Dec. 17, '99 issue)

We learned so much as we pored over the results of Net Family News's first-annual subscriber survey. The 10% response rate alone - a remarkable one by polling standards, especially given all the questions we asked you! - told us you're a very committed group of people. Seventy-three percent of you have concerns about children's online safety and privacy (19% of respondents said they have none), and 66% have concerns about kids shopping online (20% don't). And after all, the kids we're talking about belong to you: Fifty-two percent of you are moms, 21% dads, 8% grandmothers, 5% grandfathers, and 4% aunts or uncles.
As for that other major demand on your time, you cited 34 different occupations, and more than a quarter of you are educators.
We were delighted to discover that this newsletter arrives in email boxes all over the world. Just the 10% who responded to the survey live in more than a dozen countries on six continents, including 45 states and provinces in North America.
Your responses to our Net filtering questions were very interesting. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they use no online-safety tools, often citing parental supervision as their method of choice; 23% said they use AOL Parental Controls, 13% server-based filtering (e.g., FamilyClick.com, Dotsafe.com, This.com). [See a USAToday roundup on this type of filtering.]
Only 9% of you use client- or home-computer-based filtering, citing Net Nanny, Guard Dog (privacy-protection software), Crossing Guard at Crosswalk.com, Surf Monkey, Cyber Sentinel, and KiddoNet.
We also discovered that our subscribers are fairly conservative in just one area: how you feel about filtering in public places. Your response would make Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) happy, given his efforts to have filtering software installed on all e-rate-funded computers in school and libraries. In response to our question, "Do you believe there should be filtering on computers that children use in schools, libraries, and other public spaces?", 68% said "yes," 11% "no," and 23% "it depends."
Family Net-Use Policies
Most telling of all were the family Net-use rules and policies you sent us. They reflect your humor, good sense, wisdom, and love for your kids. They deserve to be shared, so we've included a sampler.
Fifty percent of respondents said, yes, they have family online-safety rules or a policy on using the Internet (25% of respondents checked "no"). The most widely used rules were about supervision and personal information:

Thirty-six percent of respondents who have family policies have the rule that there is no Net use without a parent a) at home or b) "in the same room." Under the online-safety tools question, many respondents stated that real-time, shoulder-to-shoulder parental supervision is a much better "tool" than filtering software or electronic parental controls, the reason they gave for not choosing electronic online-safety options.
Twenty-two percent of families with policies tell their children that no personal information is to be given out online - no exceptions.

As for what those policies include, some of the following will sound comfortably familiar (do we parents all sound alike sometimes?!):

Many respondents included "no chat" among their Internet-use rules and policies. A less-strict version was: "No use of chat rooms unless you have a specific friend you have arranged to talk to at a specific time."
Another popular policy is having the connected computer(s) in a central or high-traffic location in the house, so that what's on the screen is visible to all. Another version: "There will be random monitoring by us while you're on the computer."
Of course, concerns about children's exposure to sexually explicit content showed up in many family policies. Typical were: "No sexually oriented sites may be viewed by you or visiting friends." "No deliberate searches for inappropriate content, and go directly to the [default] home page if you happen upon inappropriate content."

Back to basics
Here are some really simple ones that look like they're based on some wisdom that dates back a lot farther than the Internet:

"If I don't allow it in the house, I don't allow it online."
"Don't do anything online you wouldn't do in front of me [your mom]."
"If you're online, I know it."
"Dad reviews all [browser] history files."
"Children may not alter any email or parental controls on their own." By way of explanation, the respondent added, "Trust tempered with caution."

A little more detailed

"You may chat only with family members and people we [your parents] know; and you can go only to parent-approved sites."
"You are not allowed in chat or in the parental controls area; you're not allowed to open email unless you know who it's from; no name, address, or phone number to anyone online."
"The computer is off at 9 p.m.; ignore people who bug you online; I have all passwords."
"All email and chat sessions are subject to your parents' scrutiny at any time, there is no correspondence with unknown persons, and no personal information may be given out.

"Whoever needs the computer for homework gets it first.
"No inappropriate or rude conversations are to be typed on the computer.
"No use of chat rooms, unless you have a specific friend you have arranged to talk to at a specific time.
"No sites that talk about sex, violence, or hatred. If such sites are visited, you immediately lose all computer use with no second chances."

Family policies are good things to hammer out together. Whether "traditional," "non-traditional," nuclear, or extended, families are benefited when members can sit down together, focus on something of interest to everybody, and communicate their individual and family-unit interests and concerns. Hashing over an Internet-use policy is just another opportunity of that sort. It will also make for fewer disputes over who gets online, when, and what for, and it will help keep kids' online times constructive. Once families have policies, depending on how detailed, it's helpful to print them out and tape them on or near their Net-connected computer(s).
We always appreciate hearing about your rules, as well as your family policymaking process. Email us with them anytime via feedback@netfamilynews.org.
School Net-use policies
Some of you who are teachers kindly included in their survey responses links to their schools' Internet acceptable-use policies. Here are several that might be useful to fellow subscribers:

The Killeen Independent School District in central Texas has links to both staff and student acceptable-use policies right on its home page (right-hand column, near the top).
The Encinitas Unified School District in southern California has links to students, parent/guardian, and employee Net-use policies on its Technology page. (The site's in a "frames" format, so all we do is give you the main page; the "Technology" page is at the bottom of the left-hand navigation column.)
The Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin has a whole page of Net-use and Web-publishing policies and guidelines, including a permission letter to parents for all students, K-12. With it, parents and guardians can register their objection to use of the Internet by their children.

If any of you have comments on these policies or would like to submit one that you've found particularly effective (and why!), do email us.