How to Protect Your Child from the Dangers of Online Gaming

Expert Advice for Parents from Lightlogger Keylogger

Graphic pornography, sexual predators, cyber bullies, sexting, addictive online gaming all—make the internet a dangerous place for children. No safeguard stands between the internet and your child except your involved, informed parenting. This article from Lightlogger keylogger presents effective, practical steps you can take to protect your child from one of those threats, online gaming.

Online gaming is playing games online with other players who are also online. Online gaming typically includes text, audio, or video communication among players. Content of online games is often violent as well as remarkably sexualized, even to the point of simulating sex, and content can evolve beyond a child’s age range as a game is played. Further, the unsupervised communication among players, often strangers, can be abusive and sexualized, and, like talk in chat rooms, can be a venue for predators. Finally, games can have an addictive quality that causes payers to spend an unhealthy amount of time playing.

To protect your child from the dangers of online gaming, first implement a comprehensive internet protection plan. Use the free resources offered online at Internet Safety 101, including the written rules, software tools, youth pledge, and appropriate age-based guidelines for your child. Experts on internet safety recommend parents of children 18 and under both establish clear, written rules for their kids’ online behavior and use software tools to filter and monitor their kids’ activity. Both should be appropriate to your child’s age. When installing software, include an activity monitor like Lightlogger keylogger, a website filter, and a child-safe browser for younger children.

Now take these additional steps to protect your child:

·        Require that you approve any online game your child wants to play.

·        Whenever possible, play online games along with your child to evaluate each game.

·        Look for professional reviews of the online games you are considering for your child. For example, visit common sense media, an online source of reliable, developmentally appropriate reviews, select your child’s age, and then search for appropriate online games.

·        Make sure your child disguises his or her identity using an appropriate screen name (gamer tag) when playing games online.

·        Disallow web camera use when your child plays online games.

·        Set reasonable limits on when and how long your child can play any game.

·        Spot check your child’s online activity occasionally with your monitoring software. Lightlogger Keylogger, an inexpensive, easy-to-use monitoring tool, is ideal for this purpose, since it records many types of activity, including images taken periodically of your monitor’s content.

Remember that being actively involved and interested in your child’s online life is the most important tool you have.