Every parent needs a cheat sheet on how to parent in the digital age. Your child’s digital footprint and safety online needs to be protected and here are some tips that I recently shared with the Da Vinci School in Dallas during our Parental control series we offer to parent groups.

How do I keep my children from watching Minecraft videos with profanity in them while still allowing them to view the videos that are safe?

This is quite possibly the single most frequently asked question I get nowadays from parents we work with, and there is unfortunately no simple answer. Even the best parental control filters really require a lot of finesse to allow good and not bad on YouTube. We recommend parental supervision at this point- plus the use of the whitelist/blacklist features from parental control software to blacklist all YouTube content, but then whitelisting the couple of YouTube channels you as parents approve for child use.

Is Clash of Clans ok for my kids to play?

So, this game has literally blown all previous mobile platform games out of the water from an advertising and size standpoint. Never before have children been directly marketed to before on TV and in other games they already play about a mobile game like this- even Angry Birds was more of an organically growing franchise. So parents need to be extra cautious with games like these for a couple of reasons:

• In game purchases— Obviously this can be incredibly expensive, and if you are unfamiliar with just how costly these gems, crystals and gold can be, expect 7-30 days at most of unrestricted gameplay for 100 dollars or more. That’s not a typo- this is VERY costly.
  
  
• In game chat— You can chat with anyone about anything with this game. I would not turn an 8 year old loose blindly on any game with built in chat. That said, I really appreciate that Clash of Clans asterisks out cursing, and that may be enough for some parents to sign off on this game. Personally we recommend this game for 11-12 and up, from the standpoint of protecting children from predators and bullying via chat.

How do we stop our kids from accessing inappropriate content using the built in web browsers on our new Smart TV, Blu-ray player, or mobile tablet/gaming devices?

This should be at the top of every parents list with kids 6-18 in their home. TVs, tablets, and mobile gaming devices like the Nintendo 3DS do not have built in parental controls sufficient for dictating the content viewed. There IS a way to solve this problem. A hardware based parental control filter can sit in line with your existing internet setup in your home, and can filter all the devices in the house using preset filtering limits.

Safe travels – both on the road and online!

Zach Brounoff | Texas Tech Guru
(214) 850-2669 | Zach@findctrl.com

I am an 8 year self-employed IT professional and my wife Tori is a licensed pastor.  Together, we speak to schools, parent groups and youth groups on keeping kids safe online.  This recap is from a lecture given at the Da Vinci School.
  
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