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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!
New 'time out' tool (September 5, '03 issue)
Webguard. "You'll lose your Internet privileges if you don't clean up your room ... [or] wash the dishes ... [or] get home by midnight." Whatever the goal, parents are increasingly playing the Internet card when it comes to disciplining kids, the Associated Press reports. You could call it the new "time out" or "getting grounded" in the Internet Age. Online time is also used as an incentive: "Ginny Meacham, a mother of six in Orem, Utah, uses Time-Scout Monitor to track [her children's] time online," according to the AP. "Each child can 'buy' about two hours a day by doing chores, and after the allocation is out, Time-Scout automatically shuts power to the computer's monitor." In a separate article, AP writer Anick Jesdanun reviews Time-Scout Monitor and four other time-out software products.
Another option, not mentioned in Anick's piece, is a very basic hardware product we've heard about recently: Webguard, which can be found at Venturon.com, makers of line-sharing gadgets for telephone companies. It looks and works like an electronic alarm clock, or timer, and sits between the computer modem and the wall jack (it also controls/times phone use, but that form of discipline is probably a thing of the past, right?).
