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Why Shuster Solutions?
The Internet opens a world of
possibilities for your children that were not available
when you were a child, or even as recently as a few years
ago.
From
a personal computer with an Internet connection, your child
has access to almost any encyclopedia, dictionary, book,
magazine or newspaper in the world. Your child can chat
with friends and relatives, meet new people, learn foreign
languages, develop new interests.
There is
no doubting the tremendous benefits the Internet brings
to your family.
The flip
side is that, while the world is at your child's fingertips,
the world is also allowed into your home.
While most
of these people who come into your home through the Internet
are very nice, some of them are looking for your name, your
address, phone number and other personal information. Some
are even looking for a child with whom to have sex.
In fact,
it is estimated that at least 50,000 pedophiles descend
on the Internet every day with one goal in mind: to find
a child, strike up a relationship, and eventually meet with
the child.
What can you do?
As a parent,
you essentially have 3 choices:
-
Disconnect your child from the Internet
-
Filter or censor what your child can access on the Internet.
-
Monitor and Record what your child does online and who
he/she chats with so that you can better guide your child
as to what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.
Option number
1 is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. There
is too much value to be derived from the Internet to shut
it off, and your child will be at a tremendous disadvantage
when part of their homework assignment is to do research
on the Internet.
Filtering
or censoring is, in our opinion, better than option 1, and
until recently, was about your only option. However, there
are far too many problems with filtering and censoring.
The first
problem with filtering is that it depends on your constantly
downloading lists that prevent your child from visiting
certain sites. Since thousands of new sites come onto the
Internet each day, keeping up is virtually impossible.
The second
problem with filtering is that every family has a different
set of values about what is objectionable and what is acceptable.
There is no way than any one filter list can be appropriate
for all families.
The third
problem is that many filtering/censoring products create
lists of keywords which, when encountered, prevent you or
your child from accessing a site that has that keyword.
For example, let's say the word "breast" is on
the keyword list. Seems reasonable, right? Well what if
USA Today has an article on breast cancer? What if Tyson
has an article on chicken breast meat? Well, too bad, because
breast is a "bad word", so you or your child are
not allowed access to that site.
So disconnecting
your child from the Internet is not a good choice, and filtering/censoring
is a poor choice. That leaves the third option: monitoring
and recording what your child does online, and whom your
child talks to online.
With this
option, your child has access to he Internet and there is
no filtering or censoring. However, if your inform you child
that he/she is being monitored and recorded and that you
can review what has been done later, your child will behave
much more responsibly when surfing the Internet.
In addition,
because you can review with your child their online activity,
you can help guide your child as to what is appropriate
and what is inappropriate.
In addition,
through reviewing chat conversations and e-mails, you can
determine whether an adult stranger has been trying to develop
a questionable relationship with your child, long before
it has a chance to develop into something that could become
dangerous.
We believe
that parents need to spend time with their children, especially
when they are surfing the Internet, but we also understand
that a parent cannot always be present when the child is
online. We can help bridge that gap, by recording what the
child does so that the parent can review this at a later
time.
You will
be able to SEE EXACTLY
what your child has been doing online! |