Parental monitoring (was: Re: Fics with slash, children's books etc)

[Queer as John]

I said:

>> Frankly, children shouldn't be running around on the internet unsupervised.
>> It is not the responsibility of anybody but a child's parent or guardian to
>> monitor their child's internet usage.

Judy replied:

> I don't think this is realistic.  Parents aren't able to look over
> their children's shoulders every moment. (One of my nephews got caught
> sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to surf the web.)  I am
> hoping that the .kid extension gets implemented; this would make it
> easier for parents to keep kids away from stuff they aren't ready for.

I agree wholeheartedly with you about the .kid domain. I think that would be
a fantastic idea. I agree with you that parents shouldn't be perpetually
looking over their children's shoulders when they're using the computer,
which would show parental trust, but at the same time the kid has to merit
that trust.

IMO, parents should install monitoring programs (undeletable history trails,
IM logs, chatroom logs, etc.), password-protect their internet connection,
and use filtering programs such as NetNanny. NetNanny et al are far from
foolproof, and often block genuinely useful sites, but IIRC the parent can
tap in a password to allow access, set preferences and so forth.

I am all for responsible webmastering, enabling of ratings, maturity levels
etc., but there has to be some sort of "meeting in the middle" of parental
responsibility and webmaster responsibility IMO.

It always strikes me as slightly odd when people say that internet
monitoring of children is unrealistic. Parents monitor, to whatever extent,
their children's offline interests, reading material, friendship groups etc.
‹ why shouldn't they do so online as well?

--John

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Queer as John || john at queerasjohn.com

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"There's nowt as queer as folk."  --English proverb
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