Protect Your Teens Online

To protect your teens online, you need to take a slightly different approach compared to protecting your preteens child. If you are not careful, teens can be more rebellious if the wrong approach is used. This is because they think that they have grown up enough to protect themselves, but in reality their sense of judgment is no match to an adult's life experience.

First approach you should take is to respect your teens privacy. You can do this by communicating to them about their online experience. If they are active on Instant Messaging, give them some leeway on the people they can add as buddy. However, you need to check to know who their online buddies are from time to time. Ask to see if there is anyone you know offline. You can't protect your teens online much if you don't know who they are talking to every night.

Next, teach your teens to guard their passwords.

Ask them to never reveal their password to anyone online, including their best friend from school. Tell them to never meet any strangers offline, regardless of the proposition. If the offline meeting is for a group activity, get them to discuss it with you first so you can go through the screening process. Also, share with your teens the penalty for downloading pirate software and videos from the internet. Get them to do a Google search on their real name, nicknames and other personal identifiable information. If any found, tell them to change it immediately or report it to you.

You also need to filter any inappropriate internet contents and sites in order to protect your teens online. Also consider blocking offensive images and block peer-to-peer downloads. If you kids wanted to download songs, you can sign up with legal site like iTunes or other legal music download sites. Limit your teens internet usage to around 1.5 hours a day. Only allow extra time for special school project or on academic research. Block any online dating sites like friendster.com and match.com because they are simply not ready for such thing yet.

For the filtering tips above, it is not something that can be achieved easily without using a specialize tools. Most parents use parental controls software to address the technical filter solution because it is simply the most effective, easy to use and manage.