SafetyWeb Helps Parents Ensure Kid’s Safety Online

I now have 2 kids under two years old. side note: Am I crazy or a true techie for submitting stories only one day after my second child’s birth?

Anyways, as a proud father of two ankle-biters, I have been increasingly interested in the web and how kids interact with it. One of the main concerns of parents with kids online is their safety…And rightfully so, the world wide web can be a crazy place, especially for young minds who or may not grasp the idea that they can’t control EVERYTHING they put on the web.

Social networking sites have exploded onto the web as the main way for people to communicate with each other, and it’s only logical to deduce that kids are going to be exposed to social networking sites as well. So the question naturally arises, how do parents keep an eye on what their kids are doing and saying and what’s being said about them while on the internet?

The site SafetyWeb is a services that allows parents to monitor their children’s activity on social networks in real-time. No need to force your kids to hand over all of their login info for each individual site (or worse for the kids, force them to be your “friends” on these sites), all you need is your kid’s email address and SafetyWeb scans the net (and not just individual sites you kids might be logged into) for public information regarding your child.

Regardless of where your child goes, the most recent information is displayed on the ‘Home’ screen of your SafetyWeb account. You can sort your child’s information by all activity, positives (good things your child is saying or what is being said about them), warnings, and red flags. So if your kids are involved in some “heavy” dialog, SafetyWeb will pick up on it using keywords, and displays it appropriately on the home screen.

Have more than one child? SafetyWeb allows you to monitor multiple kids. Your Home screen status page will shrink based on the number of kids you are monitoring, but you can click on each individual child for a more detailed look at their activity.

The only thing I could see as a concern is a crafty kid that knows his/her parents is watching them via their email address is to get another secret email address that the parents don’t know about. I could not find out whether or not SafetyWeb allows for multiple email addresses for one child. So parents will have to ensure the email they have for their kids is a good one.

Finally, now you know a brotha loves free, but in this case, I can make an exception. SafetyWeb does impose a fee of 10 bucks a month (or $100/year) per child. Might sound pricey, but the ability to be proactive when it comes to your kid’s online activity can be a reasonable price to ensure your child is involved in positive online activity.

Regardless of the method, I think parents need to be proactive and invest in their kids online safety. SafetyWeb provides a way to get a real-time snapshot of your child’s activity without strong-arming your kid’s login credentials and opening up twenty-eleven browser tabs of all the social networking sites your kid frequents.

For more information visit SafetyWeb.com