In the first week of our Family Tips Tuesday we discussed technology and your children while stuck at home during the quarantine. The presentation was called The Household CTO or simply, how to protect your family’s internet, hosted by Ben Murphy (guest starring Darren Miller).
Check out the full video presentation above and get the presentation slides which include all of the links to articles, podcasts, and research below:
Presentation Slides with links!
Additional thoughts (post-presentation):
I’ve had a few interesting conversations about this topic with friends and family. Here are some additional observations:
192.168.1.1 is likely the most common router admin login page
There are roughly 8 pages of porn for every non-porn page on the internet
At some point your kids will be smart enough to circumvent any filtering or blocking you choose to use. When they realize that a basic VPN is all it takes to get around this basic filtering, you have bigger problems. Hence parenting first!
Remember, if you allow your children to have a smart phone or device with a cell-phone type data plan, all they have to do is not use your home wifi network and they’re open to use the free internet again. This doesn’t replace parenting! On that note if you really need to get to your kids they do still make and sell flip phones. Using a cell provider like Ting allows you to have control over the voice, messaging, and data per device on your plan as you see fit from a touch of a button. So if they have to have that iPhone, it’s easy to disable the data plan on the fly (full disclosure that link is to my personal referral code for their service).
Putting forth a plan of action on internet usage in your home may present a "false sense of security" that you’ve done all that you need to do. Any level of filtering doesn't replace the parenting element. Where there is a will, there is a way.
