We got Abby a new computer for her birthday last week, and she’s now starting to use it fairly regularly. She has a current school assignment to do a research project on an endangered species. She had to look up a list of species and choose three interesting ones, from which the teacher would determine on what topic her report would be written. We looked at a few sites and found the island fox, which has since been learning more about online.
Of course, one of the concerns you have when you let kids browse the internet is that they would encounter inappropriate content. I’ve installed Microsoft’s Live Family Safety on her computer, which does a handy job of blocking everything on the web until Beta or I approve it. It also manages her contact list, so I can add approved family members to her instant messenger (Live).
One of the things Abby anticipates most while using her computer is being able to talk to me on mine via messenger. Yes, it’s the simple pleasures.
Family Safety is also pretty cool in that it lets you manage the list of approved sites remotely, and without installing an application on my own system. So when Abby tries to visit a site that’s not approved, I get an email asking if I want to approve it. I can log into my Live account (which I use already for my own IM, Xbox, and Zune accounts) and see what pending requests she has. Even Berta can do this, since we’re both associated to her account as parents.
When I’m sitting near her computer, I can approve sites there directly by entering my Live password into a popup tool. That’s convenient. What would be more convenient is if I could approve sites via IM, then I could do it easier via my phone or desktop IM client. Live should be smart enough to figure out where to send the request.
In all, I think Live Safety is a useful tool. Since we started using this, we’ve looked at more of the Live online features, and Berta has been adding our shared family calendar information into Live. We had previously thought to use Google, but by pairing it with other services we already use (I’m the only one of the three of us with an actual Google account) it’s more useful. The featureset of the calendar isn’t too far from what Google offers. It actually fixes some of my complaints about Google’s calendar - like how it always pops up the bubble when you click on a blank calendar cell. The subscription by iCal feature needs work, but then, so does Google’s.
I’m not surprised that Microsoft offers these effective tools. I think it’s odd that people in the circles I travel choose to eschew tools only because their Microsoft’s, and perhaps as a result, they don’t get as much exposure in my circles as other solutions. Still, I find the features of Live quite viable and useful, and I wonder if there’s more in there that I should try to discover. But getting back to the main topic…
I have not yet figured out a way to effectively filter Abby’s email. I set up an account for her, which is required for many sites that need signup including Live. Berta sent her email just this morning (I was cc’ed), and I’m sure that relatives from Berta’s side would send Abby email if they knew she could receive it. But I don’t want to expose Abby to spam or predators by not setting a filter. Based on stories of other parents, it also seems prudent to set the expectation now that I will read all of her email and IMs and texts (when she eventually gets a cell phone) so that she’s accountable for how she (and the people that talk to her) behaves online.
On the other hand, I can’t keep her safe from the invading hordes of spammers forever. I’m sure she’s still too young now to need to know whether to delete Viagra email, but I wonder what I will do in the future, and how I will decide what’s appropriate. I’m a fairly liberal parent – I’m in the camp of letting the kids learn lighter lessons for themselves rather than keeping them safe from everything. But I think I need to form a strategy now, both for when Abby starts asking questions and for when I simply can’t hold back the tide any more. Hopefully these early steps are in the right direction.
