Parent Power in Leopard

October 28, 2007

I have always been naturally skeptical about software that claimed to protect my children online. Having to approve every search result my child made before he found the site he was looking for seemed that the most painful online experience possible both for him and myself. Knowledge is PowerWhen asked the question “what do you kids do online” few parents are actually able to give a confident and informed answer simply for the reason that the next generation are digital natives, they use the internet very differently from their parents and few of us know in any great detail what they are getting up to online.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 Apple can offer parents some peace of mind while their children are online.We have been running Leopard on our home iMac for about 48 hours 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 junk mail, 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 second countdown 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 !