Parental software is an aid, not an answer

The names say it all: Net Nanny. CYBERsitter. Safe Eyes. They are among dozens of products out there meant to ease parental anxiety over what kids are doing online.

There is software to monitor where kids go online, who they talk to, who talks to them. There is blocking software to prevent them going to certain sites, filtering software to keep them away from certain content on sites, time-control software to limit their time online and kid-safe browsers that do all this for parents.

But child-safety experts caution that, while these tools may help keep kids safer online, the biggest thing they provide may be a false sense of security.

"The Internet has tried a million ways to come up with a walled garden for kids," says Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, which focuses on Internet safety for children, tweens and teens.

It's not going to happen, she says. So it is incumbent upon parents to play watchdog. And not to succumb to what Nancy Willard, executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, calls "techno-panic."

"We do not promote the importance of protecting younger children by overhyping the risks," she says.

"The more parents come from a position of fear, the greater the difficulties in creating healthy parent-child communications about Internet use. So the more these companies use fear as a marketing tool, the more they are contributing to the problem of safety online."

Best for younger children
That said, both Willard and Aftab advocate some type of security software for young users.

“The idea of protecting younger children by limiting their online activities to ‘fenced play yards’ is totally consistent with how competent parents raise their children,” says Willard. “When they are young and do not have the cognitive development or skills to independently make good choices, we keep them in protected places — fenced play yards.”

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Aftab says the alternative can be stumbling into unsavory electronic neighborhoods.

“If the kids are under 10, parents better use some type of filtering and blocking software,” she says. “If kids are searching for stuff, they often end up at porn, misinformation and criminal sites.”

Willard urges choosing that software wisely.

“If they are going to purchase such a product, they should carefully evaluate the decision-making criteria of the company” when it comes to what sites are included, as well as those that are left out, she says.

“For me, one major critical concern of sites for younger children is the degree of advertising” that such sites have, she says.

Aftab says she helps parents sort through their options by asking certain questions: “How old are your kids, what are your values, how much time and effort are you willing to put into this, how worried are you, what do your kids do online and what technology do you have to access the Internet?”

At GetNetWise.org and other sites, parents can find similar help. America Online just launched a new online safety education site, SafetyClicks.com and introduced parental controls software that can be downloaded for free. What is paramount is understanding what each type of security software does — and doesn’t — do.

“Internet safety is not one size fits all,” says Aftab.

“Monitoring doesn’t keep your kids from going anywhere,” she says. It will document everything from instant message conversations to Web sites visited and how often and at what times. But that leaves parents to pore over the reports, a chore that quickly could become overwhelming.