Protecting Your Children While Playing Games Online

Parents have long accepted the fact that playing video games is part of their children’s daily activities. After the school bell rings, children make a mad dash to their rooms to play their video game of choice. Television has since taken a backseat and handed the new pastime crown to gaming consoles like PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii. The Internet-savvy kids usually ditch the console games, but spend many hours in front of the computer playing various online games. This is when parents tend to become a little bit nervous – and with good reasons. With the increasing number of online predators, kids who spend many hours online are easy targets.

Children who play online games are especially vulnerable because these online predators can easily blend with the online surroundings and sometimes mimic the kids that they plan to victimize or take advantage of. Games that require kids to interact with other people are usually the playground for online fiends. MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) are quite popular virtual hangout for kids and teens. These games have built text and voice chat channels that makes interaction easier while immersing in the game. Other online games may not be as complex as the MMORPGs, but they still attract kids and teens because the games are user-friendly and have a rather cartoon-ish feel about the games. But as long as there is a way to mingle with other players, there is always a threat.

Parents don’t need to be constantly babysitting their kids while playing as long as they set ground rules in using the Internet.  The basic rule is that the children should inform their parents when they are online or planning to go online. This way, parents will know when to check on them once in a while. Parents can list down kid-friendly websites that their kids can visit. Any deviation from that list will have to be checked by the parents.

The “don’t talk to strangers” rule should still apply in the virtual world, but it’s very tempting to interact since there is a feeling of anonymity when you are not talking to the other person face to face. All that needs to be done in this case is to tweak the rule a bit and allow kids to chat with others, but they are not allowed to divulge any personal information. This includes real name, age, email address, home address, and other confidential information. Children who are aware of this rule will be very cautious and are less vulnerable to online predators.

The next thing that parents can do is use parental control tools that are readily available online. There are online sites that serve as “cyber nannies” which can monitor the sites that your children visit. There are also tools that automatically ban questionable websites from showing up on the browsers. These are measures if the children insist on doing things their way. There really is no need for such control if they are responsible enough to know their limitations.

Parents should not be too worried when their children start learning the wonders of the Internet. If the children are given a set of ground rules and they are made to become aware of the bad things that lurk online, then the Internet will become a safer place for them.

Protecting Your Children While Playing Games Online

Our parents had a different set of problem. When we were young and we were playing outside of the house, they were most likely worried that we could get hurt while playing, either scrape our knees or get sprained or they were worried that a stranger might talk to us and we will reply. These are just some of the issues or parents used to face. Now that we are parents ourselves, on top of these run of the mill problems, we now face additional worries whenever our children play online games. Online gaming usually offer two things that you might need to protect your child from. One is that some online games, since they offer anonymity, can be accessed by pedophiles and can talk to your child. Second is that griefers, also known as cyber bullies, can target and can make your chilled extremely miserable.

Online gaming usually has a chatting option wherein our little one can chat wit others. It is usually used to talk about strategy or barter items in the game but it can also be used to talk about non-game related stuff like TV or even about personal life.

To protect your child form pedophiles and griefers lurking in online gaming sites here are some tips that you can follow:

Make sure your child understands – If you are about to set rules or boundaries, make sure you set some time for you to explain why you are doing this. Explain that its not that you do not trust him, its just that you are not very trusting when it comes to other people

Relocate the computer – Make sure that the computer is in the kitchen or the living room area. This will ensure that you can check up on the gaming activities of your child once in a while. Also, if the computer is in a well trafficked area, your child will also be able to interact with people in the real world.

Educate – Tell your child to never give out the following information to people online:

1. Real name
2. Contact details like address and phone number
3. State
4. Passwords
5. Credit Card Numbers
6. Make sure that they use a pseudonym as a log in ID.

Ignore – Ignore both strangers and bullies online. Because if there are no responses, no matter how persuasive the stranger is, they will usually become bored and leave you

Do not stoop to their level – Tell your child that if a griefer is very persistent to never attack him the way they tried to attack your child. This will only make matters worse.

Ask help – Tell your child that when in doubt, when they do not know what to do and when they are scared, to ask help from you. Tell them that even if you are busy, even if you are not even at home, that they can call you up in the office or in your cell phone to ask help or to let you know what scared them.