How do you manage you Kids, WiFi and Devices
 

My 9 year old has an ipod with WiFi. I gave it to him to play his guitar through iRig. It was my ipod, so I had left the WiFi on. He's had it a while.

Today was a snow day so the kids were at home. I come to find that he's figured out how to Facetime his buddies. And he and this one kid were back and forth all day apparently. He's always known how to download stuff from the itunes and had installed "Clash of Clans". This has a text feature and I see where he's been texting the kids in the game, who he said were from Summer Camp. Then I see that he's giving out MY email address since they are having trouble with whatever he was trying to do (more facetime?).

So I'm pissed, and I took it away. We've never really had the discussion about not using the internet, he looks up stuff for school and such. Of course all this was done in secret and he's all upset about us finding out.

But now that he's getting older, how do I manage this? At that age, I called friends on the phone and went to their houses and stuff. There were 2 phones in the house until I was like 13.

With the always on internet, what do you do? Next thing I know they will find a way to send emails from the fridge or something.

set a schedule on your wifi router and tie it to the mac address of the device(s) he uses. Make a pc in a prominent spot available for him to do homework. Set filters on your router to block specific types of traffic and if it is not able to do that level of filtering, figure out what port the offending app(s) are using and block them all together.

opendns.org - set up an account, set your DNS to go through them. On your home router deny all other DNS servers, permit Open DNS's server IP addresses (so they can't simply go around OpenDNS by using Google's DNS Servers).

Then setup what you want to allow in the OpenDNS portal.

Change your ITUNES password unless he has his own account, if he does - disable that crap and tie him to yours via family sharing (if your device is new enough to support it). In Family sharing you can actually program that to ask you for permission to buy stuff.

OR if you simply want to disable his WIFI access - change your router's wifi settings and don't tell him what they are.

Kids are 4, 7, 10. All use multiple devices including iPod, iPad, laptop, desktop, PS4. Public use only, everything is docked at night in our bedroom or living room. Time limits for use, right now my 10-year old is 20 min into his one hour of playing PS4 online with friends, because he's already done with homework and baseball practice. I keep the iTunes password. Explicit stuff is blocked on iTunes and Netflix. We trust but verify that they aren't sailing into adult waters online. Any violation of rules makes said device disappear.

I have a 14 and 11 year old.

They have had their own laptops since they were 3-4 ish.

Used them to play educational content.

They are not allowed to leave the living room where their mother and I are.

Daughter, 14 does have an iPhone but no data plan. She can only use it over WIFI so there are times she can operate outside my control but for the most part I trust her to make sound judgements because to date she's earned it.

All accounts are under my name and they do not have the passwords. When they want to make a purchase they need to come to me.

Daughter has an email address that gets forwarded to my wife and I.

I get that you are upset but let's back up a bit.

You gave him the device and did not lay down ground rules. He is 9, they are not all that bright at that age and the stupid **** factor will most likely get worse over the next 6-7 years before it starts getting better. Ask me how I know.

The fact that he did it in secret and is upset you found out indicates he understands at some level what he was doing was wrong but you are not just fighting his immaturity. You are starting to see the effects of peer pressure. Maybe not direct peer pressure but the kind that comes from his friends appearing to have more "freedom" (read inattentive parents/lax rules) than he does.

This is a good opportunity to sit down in a calm manner and lay out the ground rules and the consequences for breaking them.

Give him the device back and tell him his probation starts now.

You can, and should, do all the things that others have suggested but you also need to give him some rope to hang himself with.

It's a good time to start learning about accountability and responsibility and to do that he needs some free reign within the boundaries that you set.

This is important, it's one thing to be comfortable with their decision making while in the house, you want to be comfortable (as reasonably as we can be as parents) in their decision making when they are not at your house.

BTW, if your router does not keep a log file you should enable traffic logging on your network. Most routers that support logging can also be set to email it to you on a schedule.

I use open DNS and block most all content reaching kids devices. It goes in categories, so that's very convenient. Parent devices are password protected.

I get a lot of grief about it, but I don't want to chase after each new thing they are into. The latest has been a request to have skype. WTF is wrong with sending an email, a text or a phone call? It goes away once the kids move on to the next application.

G

My daughter has had a phone, initially for emergency purposes, since she was 10.

I think I can count on two hands how many times she has actually made a phone call.

The younger crowd is all about texting/messaging.

It really is a more efficient method for communicating in most instances.

Skype can be used simply for texting and my daughter does use the voice feature when she is playing games like Minecraft online with her friends. It's more efficient than using in game communication and they can group call which lets them include other friends that may be involved in a different activity than the rest.

My kids are little (< 10 yrs). Mrs. Noah and I keep the passwords to the devices. The kids are not allowed to use the devices for recreational use during the school week. They keep to specific websites and are not allowed to download stuff/apps. It's not necessarily a perfect system, but so far it's worked.

Skype can also be used to show people online your body parts ... and vice versa.

I know, there always is sexting on every basic camera phone, but skype adds a couple dimensions.

What's wrong with just meeting up and hanging out? I really don't get it.

G

Ours are 6 and 9... The oldest sticks to a few select games, and netflix.

The youngest however loves to watch videos on youtube. Used to be videos of firetrucks, lately its been old football games. This weekend was the second time we have caught him watching videos of scantily clad women. He typed "butts" in the search bar.... We gave him a stern warning the first time, this time he's lost all devices until I can figure out how to lock them down like fort knox!

Sid, you're just mad his google-fu is better than yours. :p

Everyones situation is different.

For my daughter it's because her friends don't live close enough for her to walk or safely ride her bike to their houses and their is no where in between for them to meet up.

It's a really tough situation to keep current on. My son is almost 17 and daughter is 15. Both have smart phones and my son has a desktop in his room. Daughter uses our Android tablet and both use the Mac in the family room.

When they were younger I would kill our WiFi router that I had hidden on a powerstrip in the garage. Now with the phone and tablet tied to ATT the rule is no device access after 10 pm. We check from time to time and if found guilty the device is gone for a couple days. Honestly our kids are at the age, IMO, where we just need to let them make their own decisions and live with the consequences. If they stay up all night texting and are dog tired the next day then that's on them. Wife is not totally on board with that idea. We used to enforce a common password for their accounts but that is also starting to relax due to their age. I'm just gonna assume that my son has googled his fair share of "butts" at this point as well. I periodically check the router history to verify that porn sites are not frequently being accessed - kids figured out a long time ago how to clear the browser history.

Also realize that outside the house you have no control. Any connected device they encounter gives them access to their online self.

I'm in the business so I have a separate network for their devices from my business ones. Lots of backups, filters and AV.

Sadly I am a bad educator when it comes to what not to do on the internet as I would prefer to tell them just stay off it....

They started playing Steam games online and I overheard them say in shock "someone said the "N" word" - So I figured out how to build a steam server and host the games they like - so not they play on an internal server. Now the requests are coming for Minecraft, and other servers... :(

We have multiple domains as well where all the purchases and emails go to my wife, the kids do not get their own (nor do they need) emails - It's fun to see what songs they buy :)

They know the rules and we hope for the best.

Our schools assign each kid an email address and they also are required to have a google docs account.

All their assignments, along with being given in class, are posted online and some teachers require assignments to be submitted through google docs.

I would not have survived HS in this day and age.

We are always up to date on what is going on with class, assignments, homework, tests, and even grades are current to within about a week.

If my mom had those tools available back in the day I would have been toast.

I like the always up to date part, but google - pass, how do they bypass the privacy invasion?

Some Private schools here have similar, but not public.

Same here. My kids' nearest friend is probably 4 miles away, and across three major 4-lane roads. Having the childhood that I had would be impossible.

Similar to apps for business their is a google apps for education which carries with it COPA requirements.

And they stopped mining those accounts earlier this year due to privacy complaints, or so they say.

if you are worried about body parts being seen on Skype..... in person they can be seen.... touched..... and other things! granted there is no lasting evidence when in person.... unless they snap some pictures while having fun

LOL, "hanging out" now takes on a whole new meaning.

That would have been really funny if there were a typo like , meating up, get it meat, meating up and hanging out.