It seems that most children in today’s world are using computers and laptops and the trend should only continue as computers become more reasonably priced and increasingly important in our society. As a father to three great kids, one of my biggest concerns is the safety of my children while surfing on the Internet. Because of generous relatives, each of my three kids has their own laptop and because they received them as gifts, it would be difficult for me to take them away from them. (Thanks for checking with me, relatives!) So, the laptops appear to be here to stay. My major concern is how do I provide security for my children on the Internet?

Because it would be literally impossible for my wife and I to physically watch our children while they are on the Internet, there had to be a means by which they could be observed on the Internet without it being too obvious but yet powerful enough to keep them out of harm’s way. So, I took on the mission to find a service that could get the job done…

Mostly everyone that uses computers knows about social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. These sites are ingenious creations, bringing people together and providing a framework by which people can communicate the happenings of their lives with friends and family AND, if they’re not careful, the entire Internet community. This is the key point: Internet predators can scope out information about your children while they interact with their social networking communities without them even knowing about it. The predators can find out details about addresses, phone numbers, and physical locations of your children at any given time, whether it be the location of a party or a social activity.

Another phenomenon is that of “cyberbullies”, people that harass your children on the Internet, usually through social networking sites or e-mail applications. These people, sometimes kids or adults posing as children can be vicious, as it has been documented in the news in the last year. Emotionally fragile children are being subjected to threats of violence from unknown assailants, and don’t know what to do about it.

Through some researching on the Internet, I am putting together a blog page dealing with the problem of providing Internet security for children. I believe that it is very important to the safety of all our children across the country and the world. Please visit my site to read about some of the results of my research – and keep an eye on your children.

When the internet really started to become available for families, and kids in particular, it soon became fairly obvious that there were potentially real dangers. Part of the problem was that no-one really understood the internet, or at least understood its full potential. People stared to see the dangers of chat rooms and how the anonymity of the internet allowed people to lead dual lives and the potential dangers involved.

It wasn’t just that kids could access material that they would never be able to access otherwise, it was also the potential for grooming kids online and then some how arranging to meet up in person that was the new danger. A lot of advice started to come out about how best to protect kids, some of it from government, some from non-profits, some from commercial company’s dealing with the new world of internet security.

One piece of advice stood out from all the rest, which was to make sure that kids used their computers in the mainstream of family life, i.e not shut away in their bedrooms where non-one could see what was going on. This was fundamentally good advice – not because it meant that parents should snoop on their kids or check up, that’s almost a separate issue, – but it meant there wasn’t an air of secrecy around using the internet. There was a sense of openness about its use which meant that the real dangers of grooming was less likely to be able to take root.

The advent of the mobile internet has changed this area totally in a way that doesn’t seem to have been recognized much in the debate over internet safety. The fact that a kid can access the internet on a smart-phone,means that that sense of openness just isn’t there. They may not be shut in their bedroom, but the smart-phone has become a world of its own that is very personal and private – the inherent dangers of that need to be out in the open and dealt with.