"When Did Porn Become Sex-Ed?" ...parental controls

At some point, most parents implement some rules for their kids' use of technology and social media. Concern for their kids stumbling upon pornography is just one issue among many that leads parents to monitor and filter internet access. 79% limit the sites their kids can visit, and 59% limit their kid's screen time to when a parent is present. 

For young kids a white list of only approved sites is very effective, but as tech-savvy kids age, parents need to understand that clamping down and attempting to regulate every aspect of their child's access, often encourages kids to sneak around and hide what they are up to. More a parenting issue than a tech issue, it's helpful to remember that online safety is a lot like real world safety, and the goal is to raise kids to use their computers and devices to create and learn,  making good choices for themselves.

Rather than blindly relying on filtering and parental controls to keep kids safe we need to create clear parental expectations. Parental controls should facilitate conversation between parent and child about what content and behavior is appropriate, and parents need to be up-front about how they intend to set up parental controls.

Common Sense Media has a few filtering options to suggest, keeping in mind that parental controls are a billion dollar a year business. And keeping in mind that a youtube search for "disable parental controls" yields 42 thousand how-to videos for your wired teenager to check out at a friend's house.

Bottom line? There is no app that will shortcut the hard work of communicating with your kids!