By Julie Jargon
Children, without even searching for it, can stumble across porn
or risqué images online, or receive messages from strangers. It
happens in the most-innocuous places: the Fitbit activity-tracking
app, Google Docs, Pinterest and, lately, Facebook's search
engine.
Parents get exasperated trying to manage what their children see
online. Just when you think you've instituted all the parental
controls and installed all the web filters, your kid gets a friend
request from a stranger or finds photos of lingerie-clad women
while searching for cookie recipes.
Last weekend, the online parental-control and monitoring service
Bark warned parents that due to some kind of bug in Facebook's
search engine, typing a single letter into the search bar and then
choosing to see video results yielded a lengthy menu of sexually
explicit videos. "We're investigating reports of some inappropriate
content showing up in some searches," a Facebook spokeswoman told
me. "We're implementing changes and, out of an abundance of
caution, we have disabled certain parts of search until we complete
our investigation. We apologize for this error."
In December, Heather Gillstrap's 12-year-old daughter received
in her email a Fitbit friend request from a stranger whose profile
picture was of a partially nude woman. The Alabama mother removed
her daughter's email address from the app.
A Fitbit spokeswoman said the company's Fitbit Ace 2 is designed
for kids 6 and up and was developed with safety in mind; all friend
requests go to a parent's account for approval. Even with models
intended for users 13 and older -- like the Fitbit Alta that Ms.
Gillstrap's daughter has -- there are ways to report inappropriate
content and adjust settings to keep certain information private.
The spokeswoman said Fitbit has controls on the back end to stop a
lot of the spammers but can't stop them all.
While most social media platforms, including Pinterest, require
users to be at least 13 years old, the reality is that many younger
kids are signing on. One mother said her 12-year-old son was
searching for cookie recipes on Pinterest last fall and found
photos of half-naked women. Another said the same thing happened to
her while searching for a meatloaf recipe.
"We work hard to find and remove content that violates our
policies, and continue to invest in our teams and technologies to
keep such content off Pinterest," a Pinterest spokeswoman said. "If
people find content that shouldn't be on Pinterest, we encourage
them to report it to us."
"People tend to think there's safe social media, but it isn't
true. And sometimes the predators are kids," said Tracy Bennett, a
clinical psychologist and author of "Screen Time in the Mean Time:
A Parenting Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe."
Several internet safety experts told me that middle- and
high-school students have been using Google Docs to share nude
photos of one another, often for the purposes of bullying fellow
students. Brian Thomas, chief executive of Lightspeed Systems, a
software company that filters internet content for school
districts, said because so many kids' social-media accounts are
monitored by parents and their emails are monitored by schools,
they've turned to Google Docs. He said his company has developed
skin-tone analysis software to help flag potential porn to school
districts.
Dr. Bennett said she had a client whose child was exchanging
inappropriate messages over Google Docs with an adult involved with
the school. "It was the child's academic account so the parents
didn't think they had to monitor that," she said.
A Google spokeswoman said the company has a number of policies
to help maintain a positive experience while using Google Classroom
products, including one against publishing any sexually explicit or
pornographic images or videos. She also said there is a mechanism
for reporting child endangerment of any kind in Google
products.
What You Can Do
Determine your child's readiness. The first thing to consider
before giving children a smartphone, or a social-media or online
gaming account, is to assess their readiness. After all, helping
them cope is more effective than trying to shield them from all the
evils of the internet.
Diana Graber, author of "Raising Humans in a Digital World:
Helping Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology," offers
a checklist that can help parents determine when their children are
ready to post to social media or to play games online. Parents can
ask themselves such questions as, "Can she manage her online
reputation?" or "Can he protect his online privacy?"
If you determine your child is ready, some experts suggest
developing a tech contract that lays out the rules of tech use and
the consequences for violating them. Ms. Graber offers one and Dr.
Bennett offers one too.
The nonprofit Organization for Social Media Safety just began
offering a free online course on how to keep kids safe on social
media.
Talk to your kids. Experts agree that the best defense is to
have ongoing, open discussions about how to stay safe. That sounds
simple, but where do you start?
Experts suggest talking to younger children about how they feel
when something makes them uncomfortable so that they recognize
those feelings when they come across something troubling on the
internet. "You can say, 'Have you ever talked to someone and it
made you feel super weird even if you didn't know why?'" Dr.
Bennett said.
With older kids, she recommends having weekly discussions about
news topics. Parents who sign up on her site receive weekly
articles that can serve as a discussion starter. "You don't have to
run it like a meeting. The idea is to model open dialogue," she
said. "When parents seem interested in the virtual world, kids will
bring you information about their visits to the virtual world."
Make use of online safety tools -- and involve your child. No
parental control is completely foolproof -- or even childproof --
but a little effort can go a long way. Most apps have built-in
mechanisms for blocking and reporting bad actors and for filtering
explicit content. You can set up device-specific parental controls
with varying degrees of granularity, depending on the platform.
(Chromebooks, for instance, have some useful controls, but you
can't set specific hours that kids can use certain apps or
services.) For even greater control, you can block apps and
inappropriate content through your Wi-Fi router, or with an add-on
networking device such as Circle.
Experts say it is less likely that children will circumvent
parental controls if you set them up together and explain the
rationale behind them. The settings you choose will likely differ
depending on each child's age and maturity level. For example, you
might allow a 10-year-old to play online videogames with people he
doesn't know in real life, if he is mature enough to block and
report friends who don't play nicely, but you might choose
more-restrictive settings for a 7-year-old.
Plus, teaching your children how to use the tools can empower
them for the future. "By instilling the habit of blocking and
reporting, you're helping the platform remove inappropriate content
and you're strengthening your child's mental defenses against this
material because they are actively doing something about it," said
Marc Berkman, CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety.
Teach good digital citizenship. While no one wants their kids to
find inappropriate content online, it's as important to teach them
not to be a party to creating or sharing such content. Having
discussions and setting rules around not posting, sharing or
forwarding things that could be harmful to others can make them
feel like they are part of the solution.
"Anything kids share reflects on their digital reputation, and
you want to teach your kids to be the same good people digitally
that they are in person," Ms. Graber said.
--For more Family & Tech columns, advice and answers to your
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Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 30, 2021 09:14 ET (14:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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