Child Friendly Websites and Communities

UnderPressure

Hello all

OK we bought our 9 year old daughter her first laptop last Christmas rather a notebook anyhow since then she has not really made much use of the internet, when I ask her why she says she dows not know what to do and which sites to bothers with the BANG light buld moment neither do I? I have no idea of any child freiendly websites so who better to ask than you lot of lovely people :T

SHe is 9 and into everything your normal 9 year old is into, obsession with Harry Potter. She would love to join a community where she could interact with new friends via forums or even somekind of messenger or chat, maybe even so kind of an E Penpal??

I am sure I am not the first parent to come across this problem and with safety firmly in mind I though it much better to get reccomendations from this wonderful community I am a member of :j

Thanks in advance guys :beer:

DCFC79

Cant suggest any forums but im sure theres ohers who could give some suggestions, just thought have you explained to her not to give any personal info away etc, but also to ask if she isnt sure about anything eg if a website is legit

UnderPressure

DCFC79 wrote: »

Cant suggest any forums but im sure theres ohers who could give some suggestions, just thought have you explained to her not to give any personal info away etc, but also to ask if she isnt sure about anything eg if a website is legit

Hello

Thanks for your reply it is appreciated

I have explained to her the importance of safety whilst online and communicating with others it is something we have paid a great deal of attention to.
I am planning on buying somekind of spy software that will enable me to see what she is up to and what sites she is visiting etc etc etc still in the early days of researching this at the moment doing it the old fashioned way and manually checking through it at night to see what she has been doing.
She is very creative so is mostly utilising office 2010, she is producing some great stuff for a 9 year old as well I have been very impressed I am biased thouhgh

Thanks again :beer:

DCFC79

Re the software have you had a search on here as im sure ive seen threads on it

RussJK

You could look into OpenDNS as a way to filter the web for certain categories of content. It's not perfect by any means, and you'd want to test it for speed first. For me, it slowed down youtube and made facebook chat even worse (a few people I know only use FB chat for some reason).

westferret

In terms of communities the only one I really know of is club penguin. It's designed for younger ages and has different servers for different age ranges. There's also a very good monitoring system on it as well for all chats. I believe it's run by Disney. There is a free option or membership option that gives you a few more things to do. Might get bored quickly but it's free and good way to start meeting people of her age safely
Link for it http://www.clubpenguin.com/

Hope this helps

santer_2

Not a list of safe sites but protection against visiting unwelcome sites is K9 web protection which is good, use it on mine, if only you have the password then you can safeguard what is accessible. You can block sites outright in addition to the default list.

http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

When you get a site you know is OK then you can set it to permanently allow it

sp1987

CBBC? I know there was always a 'newsround' website so maybe something about on there. There may be a message board? That is obviously aimed at kids and everytime I have seen newsround they are talking about Harry Potter, lol.

Aside from communities etc.
Youtube is so good for everything. Maybe searching for craft videos. I actually learnt how to sew a little zip purse from a 14 yr old's videos on youtube. She was making prom dresses, little bags, everything. I went to look at her other videos assuming she was about 18-21 as her videos were very well edited (with subtitles etc) and was gobsmacked to find she was 14. Unsure if your daughter is into craft things but there are a lot of craft type tutorials on youtube which are fun if you are 23 so I can only imagine how good they would be if you are 9.

PasturesNew

sp1987 wrote: »

Youtube is so good for everything. .

Including nasty stuff.... my eyes still burn from 2 videos I saw last week.

sp1987

PasturesNew wrote: »

Including nasty stuff.... my eyes still burn from 2 videos I saw last week.

I've been quite lucky on youtube, thankfully. I've seen some unpleasant videos, but nothing too disturbing. It is full of foul language too but they are videos, not personal contact from someone else. Videos are almost an announcement to the world whereas individual messages are aimed at the recipient.

I remember when I was younger and myself and friends used to use MSN chatrooms, rooms for ages 11-15, it was full of old men pretending to be kids. Luckily MSN chat was shut down a few years ago, but lots of others survive. We were supervised and it was fine as you could spot them a mile off. But personally I would keep my son from websites advertised as for children which provided two way interactivity because that is where I found the most unscrupulous people were. Anonymous comment posting with no 'private message' facility all the way as far as I am concerned. I.e. anything with a sign up and a profile = no. Although a child can ignore the messages and not give personal details away, it always gave me a very bad feeling. It always felt like you could be a target, even if you were not. Even if your parent reads and 'clears' the messages before you get to them, you still know there is a reason they need 'clearance' which is not too nice a thought. If you are just posting 'comments' on someone else's view, e.g. a review of a book and nobody can see who you are, you get to interact but because nobody can speak to you, the interest to 'those' sorts of people just is not there.

I guess being 23, I have the benefit of having been a child myself earlier on in the internet boom so can hopefully help my own children with the benefit of experience on that one.

It is horrible we all have to think that way, though.

Syman

For parental controls i use microsoft family safety

On BBC Click last week, or possibly the week before they did a piece on a "facebook" type social networking site for young persons.

child friendly social networking

I have not yet tried this so cannot comment