[Kistle]

My kids are at an age where they are good enough with technology, i.e. computers, Xbox, Youtube, TV Apps, Netflix, etc... that they can access a lot of content with very little effort. We have a large-ish house, with TV's and Internet in almost every room (not their bedrooms). During the day in the summer, they are down in the finished basement a lot, playing video games, watching TV, etc... With the Xbox, there is internet connection, which means video chat with "friends", access to Youtube and other sites that have content that is not appropriate for 10 year olds.

So, we set expectations frequently about what kind of viewing is acceptable, and for the most part, they seem to be following. However, kids are curious, and it is easy to accidentally search for the wrong thing on Youtube and get something completely different than what you initially searched for, which then contains links to other videos, etc...

So, my wife and I were discussing putting a video monitoring camera down there, basically pointed at the TV. When she is upstairs, she would be able to see what they are watching at any time. No, this is not a substitute for parenting, but just another tool to manage our expectations with our kids in a connected world.

We have 2 laptops in eyeshot at any given time on the main floor, so any camera downstairs could be viewed in seconds at will from the main floor. Do we just need a "webcam"? How about one of those surveillance systems from costco with multiple cameras and a dvr? We don't think we really need to actually record any activity, but if that is easy, maybe it would be worthwhile.

Any thoughts or guidance or other ideas for what we are considering here?

Thanks,

JA