How to let your child use a computer\internet without ruining their innocence.

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Onoes

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So, my children, 7 and 9, both wanted computers for Christmas. A.) because they want to play games with the grown ups, and B) because at school computer time is a reward, so having one is amazing or whatever.

Anyway, our Christmas present to the kids was completely redoing their room, new paint, new furniture, new beds... and yes, even computers. Now, I'm only finishing this transformation tonight, after 6 weekends of labor. I create admin accounts for the parents on the computers (win 10) and standard accounts for the kids. I install Steam and set them up with accounts. I just sort of assumed locking stuff down as far as web filtering goes would be a quick google search away.

I was wrong.

Most of the child proofing options I've found are limited to android/ios apps (Google family mode, Youtube Kids, etc) and just don't have a PC equivalent that I'm seeing. I do see some software, for example Net Nanny, that seem to do it, but they include all sorts of other features I don't really need, and come with a cost. I was really expecting that there was just a chrome plugin "Kids mode" or something.

Anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions appreciated. I want to play Starbound with my kids, and not worry one of them is going to open a web browser, type "Star bound" in, and get results for "Hot Starlette bound, gagged, and used publicly!". I only want those results on my PC! haha
 
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Deathwing

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I don't think a "kids mode" will prevent searches for "jurassic park truck".
 
  • 8Worf
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Rime

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Most search engines have a toggle to set things SFW. But... other than absolute surveillance, you are not going to be able to keep your kids from getting into trouble on a computer, at least not for free. All of the Net Nanny/etc programs also harvest information. So there is no win in the situation.

Computers in their bedroom, rather than a family media room is going to end up with them eventually getting out of your comfort zone.
 
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lurkingdirk

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Computers in their bedroom, rather than a family media room is going to end up with them eventually getting out of your comfort zone.

This. All the computers in our house are laptops, and if the kids are using them, they have to be in a common area, not in their bedrooms.
 

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
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Your router usually has a parental controls feature built in. Generally based off of openDNS which isn't all that great. I use piHole and add my own list of sites to it. If you tell your kids no youtube, an empty DNS entry to googlevideo.com will ensure that they won't be watching any videos.

When my kids older though, I'll probably split them off onto their own network and I'm sort of conflicted on how much I want to intervene. I learned a lot of shit having unchecked access to the internet, but it was also a different internet back then. Hell, it's not porn or graphic content I'm worried about, it's that kids take it all too seriously these days and don't give two shits about anonymity so I feel like I have to monitor the social stuff a little bit.
 
  • 3Solidarity
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Onoes

Trakanon Raider
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Yeah, I might just drop the 80 bucks on netnanny and call it a day.

I'm not even worried about the kids actively looking for stuff at this point, they aren't at that age yet. I'm more worried about my son who loves cats searching for furry kitty and getting pictures of hairy puss or something. Shit, I googled "Flame wolf" last night looking for some kind of cool dog themed wallpaper for the other kid, and there were totally random furry dog-lady drawings in there. Too easy to accidentally see some shit you can't unsee.

I was also against the PC's being in their room, but we just don't have a place in a more trafficked area unfortunately.
 
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Deathwing

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We grew up on the Internet, pure and uncut, why not let them? We turned out alrig...oh.
 
  • 3Worf
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Lanx

Oye Ve
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So, my children, 7 and 9, both wanted computers for Christmas. A.) because they want to play games with the grown ups, and B) because at school computer time is a reward, so having one is amazing or whatever.

Anyway, our Christmas present to the kids was completely redoing their room, new paint, new furniture, new beds... and yes, even computers. Now, I'm only finishing this transformation tonight, after 6 weekends of labor. I create admin accounts for the parents on the computers (win 10) and standard accounts for the kids. I install Steam and set them up with accounts. I just sort of assumed locking stuff down as far as web filtering goes would be a quick google search away.

I was wrong.

Most of the child proofing options I've found are limited to android/ios apps (Google family mode, Youtube Kids, etc) and just don't have a PC equivalent that I'm seeing. I do see some software, for example Net Nanny, that seem to do it, but they include all sorts of other features I don't really need, and come with a cost. I was really expecting that there was just a chrome plugin "Kids mode" or something.

Anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions appreciated. I want to play Starbound with my kids, and not worry one of them is going to open a web browser, type "Star bound" in, and get results for "Hot Starlette bound, gagged, and used publicly!". I only want those results on my PC! haha

webroot for the best zero resource malware/virus anything protection

https://www.netnanny.com/products/netnanny/ netnanny is 60bucks 5pcs new years special
 
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gshurik

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I used Net Nanny for a few years. It works. Kids didn't even know it was on their computers. All sorts of filters and alerts. I'm not sure how it works now, but I put NN on the kids PC. The adult version on mine. Every time something inappropriate was even typed I got a nice red warning.

Net Nanny: Parental Control Software & Website Blocker
Just out of curiosity, do you need to be on the same network to use netnanny?

Reason I'm asking is that my niece and nephew are getting to the age where they want to use a computer, but my sister is retarded with them so I'd like to monitor what they're doing just in case it's inappropriate.

I don't live with my sister so it's obviously difficult but if I could monitor it from home it'd be really useful.
 

Onoes

Trakanon Raider
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webroot for the best zero resource malware/virus anything protection

https://www.netnanny.com/products/netnanny/ netnanny is 60bucks 5pcs new years special

That's perfect, thanks!

And no gshurik, you can manage it all remotely it looks like, including having it send you real time alerts the moment they try to break the rules. Niiiiiice.

You're the best Lanx, everyone upvote him. Downvote Deathwing for mansplaining. ;)
 

gshurik

Tranny Chaser
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That's perfect, thanks!

And no gshurik, you can manage it all remotely it looks like, including having it send you real time alerts the moment they try to break the rules. Niiiiiice.

You're the best Lanx, everyone upvote him. Downvote Deathwing for mansplaining. ;)

That's handy, thanks for the info!
 

Brahma

Obi-Bro Kenobi-X
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Just out of curiosity, do you need to be on the same network to use netnanny?

Reason I'm asking is that my niece and nephew are getting to the age where they want to use a computer, but my sister is retarded with them so I'd like to monitor what they're doing just in case it's inappropriate.

I don't live with my sister so it's obviously difficult but if I could monitor it from home it'd be really useful.

Not sure. I used the email alert from work since I couldn't put the software on my work PC.
 

Lanx

Oye Ve
<Prior Amod>
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That's perfect, thanks!

And no gshurik, you can manage it all remotely it looks like, including having it send you real time alerts the moment they try to break the rules. Niiiiiice.

You're the best Lanx, everyone upvote him. Downvote Deathwing for mansplaining. ;)
that webroot is 3pcs btw

also don't forget teamviewer is free for personal use
 

BrutulTM

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You can also set some routers to turn off internet access to certain computers at a set time or when you tell it to. It sounds like net nanny is probably better for now but down the road it will be nice to be able to kill the internet when they're supposed to be sleeping or if you don't want them alone on the net. You can also shut off wifi to phones and tablets.