If you follow my blog and social media then perhaps you recall my struggle with the littles and Youtube! You see with 4 kids here who love YouTube it can feel like a part time job just helping them manage the content they want to see, keeping them safe from content we don’t want them seeing, and now managing the content they are trying to create. Here are a few of the issues we are having when dealing with internet safety. Part of it is the parental control on YouTube and part of it is just communication with the kids!
Internet Communication
One of the things the kids adore is Minecraft and that can be a very social game on PC’s. They check out every minecraft video they can get and often come across cuss words in them, this though is one of those minor things and not so much a safety issue. It is near impossible to filter this content in my experience but communication with the kids is key, they need to know what is acceptable in your home. Having chats often about this important. My kids know that watching videos with bad language isn’t ok and so they stay clear of certain user videos while on YouTube. My 9 year old son is great about this, his 7 year old sister on the other hand has a harder time, she likes to tell me that she doesn’t care what the person in the video is saying but she just wants to learn how to build that special something. I can understand that but she needs to search for a different video and asking for help doing that ok!
Commenting on videos is an issue, sometimes the kids will be asked for their user names and little kids can easily be lied to in order to get passwords out of them. Having this conversation is vital. Having a program that can keep track of social media like this is helpful! Thankfully husband can program really well! No amount software though is going to stop a child from sharing a password, this conversation has to happen and has to be reinforced often. Tell them to never ever share a password online or even with friends. The same holds true of their address and personal photos. All media going out into the internet can not be taken back so kids should know to check with an adult first before sharing things like photos and videos online.
YouTube Adult Content
We are in the land of the free and censorship makes me twitch but there are topics little people are not ready for (there are topics I am not ready for!) and their amazing curiosity can land them in adult land on YouTube accidentally. How to set Parental Controls on YouTube can be rather easy. Sign into your google account and then go to the bottom of any YouTube video page and click on the Restrictions Off button and it will pull down and you can see a “lock” button. This will lock adult content out on that browser on that machine. You an then log out of your google account and that browser stays locked for YouTube videos. As Hope Pixie, Mr. Handsome, Storm Baby, and Smilie Baby, all have their own laptops I have had to do this on each of them. Though in my opinion Hope Pixie being 16 is getting to the age where I need to trust her and be here for her in case she makes mistakes. I have already had the adult content chat many times just to warn her when that time comes, because it will, and when other kids are over she needs to know that she is in charge of her machine and that she is responcible for what happens on it and to not let other kids curiosity land her in trouble. I let her in on a joke at one point when her laptop ended up full of viruses as she tried to download additional content for her SIMS games, content she learned about on YouTube! I told her the number one way to get viruses is adult sites and that I think that every time someone asks me to fix their machine. They mention they have a virus and I internally giggle about what they might have been up to! When an older family member asked me where they got a really interesting computer virus I asked them carefully if I should check their browser history to find a clue. They decided they didn’t want to know after all and didn’t want me to look and I can respect that. As a parent though I feel it is my job to check browser histories for the machines my children are using and to teach them about safe internet use. If adults get viruses often then our kids specially need to be informed. Alas, I have gotten to rambling! Keep Safe!
Find the tools that will help you keep your kids safe and have those important conversations often!
