A Safer (Apple) Internet
Symantec published a report on how long children spend online. Included in the study was a look at how long parents thought their children were online in a single month. The perceived time was around 18 hours per month but the reality was well over 40 hours.
Interestingly though the report noted ”Around the world about one-third of parents are putting software controls, such as filters, on a family PC to keep children away from inappropriate content. In the UK the number putting controls on a PC rises to 54%.”
This raises a number of questions, are we more paranoid in the UK or justifiably cautious ? does filtering software actually work ? should we use such software or should we be educating children how to surf wisely ?
Apple users (well those with Leopard) are in a massive advantage when it comes to parental controls. No need for additional third party software it is all built into the operating system and excellently specced.
The internet should not be treated with parental fear, the vast number of learning experiences it offers makes it an essential part of every home and now can offer parents some peace of mind while their children are online.
We have been running Leopard on our home iMac since release and one of the first things we updated were the parental control settings for the different user accounts.
Like previous versions were are able to access the controls remotely but Apple have really invested in this area of the OS since Tiger.
A safer Internet.Using the same technology that keeps your inbox free of, a new content filter in Leopard takes a quick peek at websites before they load and tries to determine if they’re suitable for kids. If not, Leopard blocks them from view.
Of course, you can override this filter by creating lists of specific websites you want — or don’t want — your children to see.
Bedtime and time limits.
Last night I was startled by what sounded like a voice coming from our Mac saying due to parental controls we had 15 mins before we would be logged out.
There was a reminder at 5 mins and a 10 at the time came to an end.It had turned out one of the children was still logged on to the computer and their 2 hour daily weekend quota of computer time had expired.
Many kids would sit at the computer for days if you let them. Fortunately, Leopard makes it easier to set the rules. Just enter bedtime and time limits for using the Mac, specifying different times for weekdays and weekends if you wish.
Under log and key.
Knowledge really is power with Leopard. Apple now give parents the ability to view their kids’ activities to help you keep them from communicating with people they shouldn’t be.
The log keeps track of websites your kids have visited, applications they’ve used, and people they’ve chatted with. It’s the perfect way to make sure your children stay safe online. You can access the parental controls and monitor logs remotely from any Mac on the network.
There is no replacement for Education.
I would also stress that as parents we should not rely on such Parent Controls to keep our children safe online. Parental Controls should be considered a additional safe guard used while we teach and empower our children how to be safe online.
I think if you have children and they use the internet then the Parental Control features built in to Apple’s Leopard OS are hard to beat.
Having tried various 3rd party PC applications in the past I am yet to come across as simple and powerful control system that any parent will be confident using than the one offered for free in Leopard !
The article can be found here.
