Internet Parenting Outside the Home: Is Your Child Protected?

By John Carosella

Cities and towns around the globe are sponsoring, experimenting with, and experiencing an explosion in free wireless Internet access – or WiFi for short. Free public WiFi enables anyone who has a wireless device to get Internet access wherever the wireless signal reaches. Typically, these wireless "hot spots" are in and around downtown areas, libraries, or college campuses and their footprint is growing rapidly. ABI (Allied Business Research) recently reported that municipal WiFi network coverage worldwide will increase to 126,000 square miles by 2010, representing an 84x increase from 2005’s coverage.

Although this idealistic community investment enables college students and professionals to access the Internet over their morning coffee, on the commuter train, in the park, or wherever their workday takes them, there are risks to consider when it comes to children.

If your tween or teen has a laptop and a bicycle (or can ride the bus), he or she is now be able to find unfiltered Internet access. It doesn't matter what parents do to protect their children within the home if free wireless access is available down the street. Many public WiFi networks are not filtered because local governments and institutions prefer to avoid questions of censorship. Censorship is a red herring. The real issue is how parents can be proactively responsible for monitoring the online behavior of our tech savvy "Generation WE" kids. In meeting that responsibility, free public WiFi opens up a whole new can of worms.

Free public WiFi networks can be a serious child-safety blind-spot in both civic planning and good parenting. It’s a powerful, easy-to-use, and increasingly ubiquitous technology that has the potential to dramatically impact your child’s safety – and your ability to parent. As parents and members of a community, we have an obligation to provide a safe environment for our children. We also have a right to expect, and an obligation to ensure, that public assets don’t create unnecessary challenges to that safety. We have to make sure that as part of these new community investments we include provisions to keep our kids safe and protected.

Ask yourself: Do I know where the local WiFi hotspots are? Have my community leaders engaged the public in a dialog on the impact of this new kind of community resource? What laws apply to providers of public WiFi to protect kids under 17 from offensive content? Have community leaders approached all stakeholders to exercise a voice? It’s often up to parents to create a dialog with neighbors, business leaders, and community officials to ensure the issues are being discussed by everyone.

Following are a few tips on how you can address the issues with your child and within your community:

Connect with your community. Your home computer is not the only one your kids have access to. Do the parents of your children’s friends have kid-coaching or supervising tools (also know as "parental control software") on their computers at home? Does your child have a laptop, Internet-enabled cell phone, or game device? Make sure the adults in your community understand the ramifications of these devices, and why it’s critical for the entire community to get involved. And hone your skills—if you’re a technologically savvy parent be a resource to those around you.

Establish rules and expectations for outside of the home. Internet behavior is public behavior. Things that pass over the Internet may feel "intimate" or "private" to your children, but in reality it’s very public and not just limited to the home. It is also important for parents themselves to understand the Internet is more like a billboard than a diary before they can effectively make their kids understand. Kids need to realize their public behavior affects the whole family and that’s well within your parental responsibility and authority to manage. And remind them to keep private information private.

Listen to your kids and open up dialogue. When kids use the Internet, either inside or outside the home, how are they using it and where? Teenagers can be difficult to read, but they usually have strong (if not always well thought out) motivations for their actions. Opening up dialogue on your child’s whereabouts when ‘connected’ away from home can give you great insight into what they are doing, with whom, and why. Understanding why your kids use the Internet the way they do is just as important as understanding how they’re using it.

Install Internet monitoring and filtering software on your home computers and laptops. The kinds of material available today on the Internet are nothing like Playboy magazine of thirty years ago. The pornography is far more explicit and much of it promotes pedophilia or a connection between violence and sex. Addictive gambling among teenagers is a growing problem, and many of them are learning to gamble online. Web filtering software can keep them from getting started. Remind them that it’s your job to keep them safe and explain what you’re planning to do. If you start blocking sites and monitoring your kids without first having reached an understanding with them about safe Internet practices, they’ll no doubt feel that you’ve broken trust with them.

Being an Internet Parent involves more than just using filtering software. It means learning about the dangers of the Internet, how and why your kids are using the Internet, and taking control of when, where, how, and how much your children use it.

The challenges posed by increasingly ubiquitous wireless Internet access are not going away. The 21^st century wireless movement is growing and cities – small and large – are rapidly embracing this new public resource. It’s your obligation as a parent to take responsibility for how your children are using the Internet and what they are exposed to, whether inside or outside of the home. By raising awareness on the issue, you will have done your family and your neighbors a great service.

John Carosella is the vice president of content control at Blue Coat Systems where he is responsible for the K9 Web Protection Internet filtering product and the company’s associated community outreach program. Through the program, John hosts speaking engagements to educate and assist first generation Internet parents on the impact the Internet has on children and on parenting strategies in the 21^st century. John is a frequent resource on the topic, and has been published in several parenting magazines and is included in the feature-length documentary Traffic Control – Caution: Minors, Internet, and Porn. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University, and can be reached at john.carosella@bluecoat.com or through his parenting blog www.theinterentparent.blogspot.com.