Ugh. Children and computers.

[lauren grier]

Kiddo has his own laptop. I got tired of sharing and the amount of school work that he needs the computer for is just increasing. We set the parental guidelines and all that blah blah. But this child is a virus magnet. I'm about to look through his history but I can't imagine how he's really picking up so many. He DOES google minecraft videos constantly so I'm blaming this activity. I just ran a scan and there were 21 viruses/spyware hits. Good grief. Our little antivirus thing even shoots up a warning when you're on an unsafe site so clearly he's ignoring this. I'd block his internet access entirely as punishment of some sort right now if it wasn't for the school stuff. Gr.

[lauren grier]

Mostly cleaned up now. I felt like I was looking at my grandmothers computer. He'd even installed some stupid toolbars !

[luckyme]

My kiddo's difficulty is knowing what is appropriate to put out there. I have Norton Family installed and it won't allow her to fill out forms so that's a comfort to me. I also get an email summary of everywhere she's been and it allows me to block content based on categories. So, at her age, I've blocked pretty much everything -- but my biggest worries aren't gaming or social media (yet), it's advertising. Kids her age are so susceptible to anything that sounds good. We talk to her all the time about how advertising isn't always truthful and doesn't tell the whole story -- let's hope it sinks in one day! I also have her laptop set up so that it requires my admin password to install anything.

Parenting in the modern age is *hard*! :P

[melissakay143]

Yikes... We have a computer "for the kids" but they are still (barely) young enough to need / use it. Between their kindles and awards for using our iPad occasionally it just doesn't happen. I am
Def scared of thing like that tho... I think I want to install one of those dongles that tracks things and from afar can shut it down if it's inappropriate content.


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[Penny Springmann]

Ugh! We don't even monitor the boys' computers...I can imagine they must be ripe with nasty stuff. Guess we should check!

[mariewilcox]

Originally Posted by Penny Springmann

Ugh! We don't even monitor the boys' computers...I can imagine they must be ripe with nasty stuff. Guess we should check!

LOL same here Penny - Cheyanne has her school laptop and one of her own too. They do just about everything for school on the Mac and she rarely uses hers at home except during school vacation. She hasn't mentioned any issues though either of them.

[rach3975]

We use Norton 360 on all our computers and have a family safety setting set up on the kids', but I know I should probably do more. My oldest is 10 and is exploring the internet a lot more than he used to. He's generally good about asking before he installs anything or if a warning pops up, but I haven't specifically checked lately. (And slightly off topic, the homework that he needs a computer for has increased a lot this year, too. We're not at the stage where he needs his own computer yet, but if my 8 year old's homework follows the same pattern I bet we'll reach that point when they're in 4th and 6th grade.)

[carrie1977]

I don't look forward to the days when my children have their own laptop...

[staciahall]

Mine is old enough that he was actually surprised I knew more about it than HE did when his laptop last had a problem. Thank goodness for Google! Helps you figure SO many things out so quickly. Of course it helped I had a computer that still worked...

[rach3975]

Originally Posted by staciahall

Mine is old enough that he was actually surprised I knew more about it than HE did when his laptop last had a problem

A friend of mine had this linked on her FB page recently. I'm including a few quotes below, but the gist of it is that our generation actually knows more about computers than today's kids and young adults do. He also has some good suggestions about what we can do about it. (Of course there are some young adults who DO know computers well, but I thought it was an interesting read.)

Not really knowing how to use a computer is deemed acceptable if you’re twenty-five or over. It’s something that some people are even perversely proud of, but the prevailing wisdom is that all under eighteens are technical wizards, and this is simply not true. They can use some software, particularly web-apps. They know how to use Facebook and Twitter. They can use YouTube and Pinterest. They even know how to use Word and PowerPoint and Excel. Ask them to reinstall an operating system and they’re lost. Ask them to upgrade their hard-drive or their RAM and they break out in a cold sweat. Ask them what https means and why it is important and they’ll look at you as if you’re speaking Klingon.

Windows 7 (I hate 8, but that’s another story) and Mac OS X are great operating systems. They’re easy to use, require almost no configuration, include or provide easy access to all needed drivers, and generally ‘just work’. It’s fantastic that everyone from the smallest child to the eldest grandparent can now use a computer with absolute minimal technical literacy, but its also a disaster. It didn’t used to be like this. Using an OS used to be hard work. When things went wrong you had to dive in and get dirty to fix things. You learned about file systems and registry settings and drivers for your hardware. Not any more.