Family Tech: Tools to monitor your children online

Parenting Millennials has its own challenges. The Millennial generation — or Generation Y or the Baby Boom Echo — are the children now 15 to 28 years old. They have generally always had a computer available, they relate to their peers via social Web sites, they share their lives online and are often more adept with technology than their parents.

They use technology for positive activities, but also to get into trouble with sexual text or e-mail messages (referred to as “sexting”), communication with inappropriate people, pornography and more. They also fall to the same temptations we did without technology : drinking, drugs, lying to parents, hanging out with the people their parents do not approve and sex.

Technology gives them more ways to get into trouble, but it also gives parents some new tools for checking up on their younger Millennials while they are still living at home.

Before I get into this, let me just say I find this a distasteful subject. Parents have always had to spy on their children, even though we hate doing it. We peek out the window as our daughter’s date brings her home and read our children’s diaries. We do it because we love our kids and want to make sure they are safe. A final note: I am not a lawyer. I’m not sure if all these strategies are legal, especially if your child is 18 or over. Obtain legal advice before doing some of the more serious things here.

There are easy ways to monitor your child’s online use. Web browsers keep a history file showing what sites have been visited. Keep your own password-protected administrator account on your child’s computer so you can check this information.

There is filtering software you can buy to limit the sites visited, and keylogging software that tracks every keystroke so you can read their e-mails and instant messaging. Of course the best way to monitor them is to have them do all their computer work from the dining room table or in the family room where you can walk up behind them.

If you fear your kids are online all night long, your wireless router can be set to deny Internet access during certain hours.

Insist they friend you on Facebook and check their posts to make sure it isn’t a for parents-only decoy account. Are their friends on that account? Do they post to it often?

When you can grab their phone, check text messages, and look at call histories. Many cell phone companies offer a service that lets you see where the phones are at all times. There are devices for about $200 you can hide in your car and later retrieve and plug into your computer. It will tell you where the car was, when it was there, and how fast it was going. Higher priced models report back via cell phone in real time.

Choose your battles. If you bust your daughter for hanging at her best friend’s house when she said she’d taken the car to the library, she’ll find another way to go see that guy she’s promised she’d never see again. And use this power sparingly. Sometimes the best way we can let our children grow, and for us to sleep at night, is not knowing things. Use this technology when you suspect serious danger for them, but otherwise just take an occasional peek into their lives to make sure they are the good kids you know them to be.

Links for items mentioned in this column can be found at: http://bit.ly/FamilyTech Mark’s blog is at http://markstout.blogspot.com and his email address is markstout@gmail.com.