You may choose to install a parental-control system, but you’d be wise to pick
one that emphasizes cooperation over control. Do you know what a secure
anonymizing proxy is? Your child probably knows exactly how to subvert
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house rules, such as Norton Family Premier, is a good start. Along with
Kaspersky Safe Kids and Net Nanny, Norton can also display a warning rather
than a hard block when your kid is about to enter an inappropriate site or run
out of screen time.
- ALWAYS APPLY COMMON SENSE
Kids do crazy things. That’s their job! If they don’t go a little wild, they won’t
learn what works and what doesn’t. There’s a literal change in brain
development around age 25 that tones down the randomness. You’ve got the
advantage of common sense, so you can help by gently reining in rash online
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You know you need antivirus on your computers, even though you try not to
click suspicious links or visit sketchy sites. Your kids are surely more impulsive
with their clicks, so they need that protection even more. Consider the following
tools that let you manage protection for all your family’s devices: Webroot
SecureAnywhere AntiVirus, Sophos Home Logo Light, and Emsisoft Anti-
Malware. While these aren’t all Editors’ Choice top picks, they all let you
manage your family’s protection from a single console. You don’t want antivirus
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If you’ve already got an antivirus or security suite that works well for your
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some degree of remote control, or at least remote security monitoring.
- DON’T IMPOSE KNEE-JERK SCREEN TIME LIMITS
It used to be so clear: Too much screen time is bad for kids, period! The
American Academy of Pediatrics used to advise keeping kids up to 2 years old
away from electronics altogether and then allow, at most, an hour a day for kids
from 2 to 5 years old. But that’s not what they say now. The Academy has
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that includes setting aside time without tech and modeling good behavior for
your kids. Yes, that could mean cutting back on your own habit of sitting for
hours in front of ESPN or the news.