The Ubuntu Chronicles: The Saga of Amber and Ubuntu
Part 23
Parental Controls part 2
I think people have misunderstood what I was trying to say about parental controls and Linux.
1) I wasn’t speaking about me and my kids. – pgraner has put all the things on our network that are possible, and necessary, and I set up the parental controls on the Mac on top of that.
2) I raised the questions because my friends who I am trying to convert to Ubuntu or just look at the possibilities of Linux of any distro raised the questions. The honest answer was nope they don’t come with parental controls built-in.
3) I am trying to get other groups such as churches and schools to take a look at Linux as well. (This is important issue to these groups as well)
I know that kids aren’t necessarily smarter than kids of other generations they just have more technology at their disposal. There is no system that is not impenetrable, but our kids need to know and understand that we as parents are going to do all we can to protect them. We talking to them, spending time with them, making sure that if they are at a friends house the other other parents are informed and taking care of our kids when they are there, we send our kids to schools and we expect them to be safe in that environment as well.
I am not saying lock them in their rooms and keep them from the “big bad world”. I am saying that I like Linux and I want to make sure that if Parents and the average users know that they can use Linux; and should they choose Linux, parents (and any group that deals with children) need an easy way to use parental controls.
I want more people to understand that Ubuntu is an easy, cost effective way to go. I want to be able to tell people, my average user friends, that the option is available. That’s all no more no less.
I just wanted the conversation to begin.
Having said that, since people wondered about “predators” being on the internet, and the when did the Internet become scary, and why do we need to even worry. I am including a few websites that have some information that speaks to that.
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html#anchor
The information below comes from the above link
| Children Internet Pornography Statistics | |
| Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography | 11 years old |
| Largest consumer of Internet pornography | 35 – 49 age group |
| 15-17 year olds having multiple hard-core exposures | 80% |
| 8-16 year olds having viewed porn online | 90% (most while doing homework) |
| 7-17 year olds who would freely give out home address |
29% |
| 7-17 year olds who would freely give out email address | 14% |
| Children’s character names linked to thousands of porn links | 26 (Including Pokemon and Action Man) |
The below link is from the Center for missing and exploited Kids…
http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/ServiceServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=3072
Hope this helps people understand why the questions were raised. I thank everyone who gave me the names of applications to use.
Again, I was looking for any Linux OS that had built-in parental controls so I could help the average user make the transition, and this was part of the discussions they had with me.
Enjoy! More later…
