Using a computer can be an extremely enriching experience, especially for young people. Using this technology to explore, learn, and have fun whether on the internet or playing games creates an environment where learning can be exciting.
As with all things our children experience, we parents want to be both involved and set limits on what they are doing on their own – especially at a young age.
But why do we need parental controls? Consider this analogy: As we teach our kids to ride a bike, we put on training wheels and supervise them as they ride up and down our driveway.
Soon we give them more autonomy letting them ride up and down the street and later around the block unsupervised. Eventually we take off the training wheels completely.
Similarly we also want to slowly introduce our kids to computing and the internet. We can’t hover over their shoulder watching and instructing every move they make but we can still be involved.
Using technology such as parental controls will allow you to give your kids some autonomy to explore within the limits we set for them, and spur discussion when they reach those limits.
Windows 7’s parental controls allow us to limit what sites our kids can browse to, what programs they can run, and how much time they spend on the computer. But it wasn’t always this way. In Windows XP, Microsoft’s concept of parental controls was mostly a joke, with poorly implemented controls in a handful of applications.
With Windows Vista, we saw a major rewrite of parental controls which integrated those controls into the operating system. And now with Windows 7 we have a refinement that begins to get things right.
With Windows 8, we need to have a continuation of that flexibility and extension of the ability of the parents to monitor the kids from the cloud.
I should be able to see what my kids are using their computer for from any other computer in the country via a cloud service.
Just my take…
What do you guys think?
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