Headline: Safety Nets for your Child's Internet

With the recent announcement of Google launching new family-friendly features for the Google Play store demonstrates the growing need for developing online safety measures. The filters for the store’s games, apps and other media allow parents to decipher appropriate content for their children, an important first step in protecting the younger digital generation from inappropriate content.

This is a great feature to enable parents to keep their children safe when using particular apps, unfortunately however, parents still face the risk of younger users selecting age inappropriate material when using connected devices outside of parental controls.

• Encourage them to talk to you about their online experience and, in particular, anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened.
• Set clear ground-rules about what they can and can't do online and explain why you have put them in place. You should review these as your child gets older.
• Use parental control software to establish the framework for what's acceptable - how much time (and when) they can spend online, what content should be blocked, what types of activity should be blocked (chat rooms, forums, etc.). Parental control filters can be configured for different computer profiles, allowing you to customise the filters for different children.
• Protect the computer using Internet security software.
• Don't forget their smartphone - these are sophisticated computers, not just phones. Most smartphones come with parental controls and security software providers may offer apps to filter out inappropriate content, senders of nuisance SMS messages, etc.