Category: Tech Benefits
How to Successfully Combine Summer Fun and Family Time with Technology
My favorite thing about summertime is the extra time I get to spend with my family. Whether we go on a family vacation, have a backyard barbecue or take a day trip, summer is a great time for us to reconnect and simply enjoy each other’s company. For most kids, summertime means camp, sleeping in [...]
Back to School Online Safety Guide
As school starts back up for most students across the country and parents face the inevitable back-to-school frenzy that follows, most parents tend to overlook one very important preparation aspect: the digital safety aspect. The back-to-school season is responsible for billions of dollars spent on digital devices; laptops, tablets and smartphones are changing the way [...]
Family iBoard Review – A Social Networking Tool Created Just for Families
The Family iBoard, which is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and all iOS devices, gives your family their own secure Private Family Network. Think of it as a digitally secure safe where your family members can share private information and content with each other without worrying about their privacy being violated. It’s also a great way to keep [...]
Advice for Life App Review
Advice for Life ($.99) is a new application by Parenting Bookmark that gives you a panel of parenting, relationship and health experts right on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. The app grants you access to videos and podcasts created by the experts, their weekly updated tips and advice, as well as the ability to [...]
A Positive Online Experience for Our Children
Despite the challenges that we face in the area of safe social networking for kids, I absolutely love and support everything that my company is doing to create a safer, more positive online experience for children. After reading Melanie Schreffler’s piece in YPulse titled The New Millennial Mindset: Positive is as Positive Does, I couldn’t [...]
A Better, More Progressive Internet for Our Children
The other day I read an interesting column on Forbes.com called “Avoiding a Precautionary Principle for the Internet”. In the article, Adam Thierer voices his concern with adopting a “precautionary principle” as it relates to the progression of Internet technologies. The precautionary principle that he mentions is the notion that since every current or future [...]
The Value Social Networking Provides Our Children
Five Reasons Why You Should Encourage Your Child to Be Online Yes, you read that right: encourage your kids to be online and join a social network! As a mom of five, I know how busy our children’s lives can be between school, homework, after-school activities and friends. So you might wonder “when” I’d suggest [...]
VINCI Tab: The Perfect Tablet for Your Toddler or Preschooler
Leveraging technology to be used as an educational tool can be tricky with so many missing standard safeguards. But if any piece of entertainment technology has proven to be useful, from an educational standpoint, in schools and in homes, it’s the tablet PC. Enter Dr. Dan D. Yang. Dr. Yang has capitalized on this potential [...]
Digital Maturity – Are We Headed In the Right Direction?
This past week I was invited to AVG’s Digital Maturity event in San Francisco. I sat at the table with about a dozen or so child advocates and online safety experts. We discussed a number of topics related to children online, as well as the current level of parental involvement and education in the US [...]
Security Software is Getting Smarter—So Should We
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. This common phrase is most often credited to 18th century English poet Alexander Pope, but it still holds true today—especially when it comes to technology. Three decades into the personal computer revolution, many people are still better at getting into trouble with their machines than preventing it. Despite [...]
Video Guide: How to Set Up YouTube Safety Mode
Like Google SafeSearch, which you can learn to enable here, YouTube’s Safety Mode does a great job of filtering out videos that some parents may consider inappropriate for their children. Thankfully, YouTube already does a fairly good job of removing any inappropriate content on the site. But with the millions of videos being uploaded and viewed [...]
Video Guide: Setting Google Safe Search
Google’s search engine is comprehensive—there’s really no other word to describe it. It scours every corner of the Internet looking to match your search terms, and more importantly your child’s search terms. In a broad sense, “every corner of the Internet” can be a scary thought when it’s your child behind the keyboard; that’s why [...]
How to Disable FaceTime on Your Child’s iDevice or Macbook
Simply put, my 10-year-old son was heartbroken when he dropped and cracked his iPod Touch earlier this year. He took it rough. After all, he couldn’t play his favorite mobile games and he couldn’t listen to his music—I know, tragic for a 10-year old. Last week I figured he had endured this pain long enough, [...]
Introducing Your Child to Social Networking: Ten Must-Know Tips for Parents
You’ve likely joined Facebook because you understand that social networking can be a valuable tool to keep up with family and friends. Or perhaps you are a business professional and use Twitter and LinkedIn because of the value it brings to your business. Maybe you don’t social network, but your friends do and you’ve heard them [...]
The Declaration of Digital Citizenship
When I read Richard Guerry’s Declaration of Digital Citizenship for the first time in the Social Networking Safety group in Facebook, I absolutely loved it. However, I wanted to know more, so I came up with a list of questions for Richard that would allow me, and you, to better understand exactly why this declaration [...]
How to Form Good Technology Habits Early
As soon as your children start tapping on the keyboard, that’s the time you should begin your online parenting. You’ll be happy to know that parenting online isn’t much different than parenting your child when they aren’t in front of a keyboard. Much like the food pyramid that helps guide our knowledge of a healthy [...]
How to Set Parental Controls on Mac OS X
It isn't hard to look around and see the social and technological influence that Apple has had on our society. They’ve slowly placed an iPhone, iPod or Macbook (sometimes all three) in most American homes, and Apple isn’t showing signs of slowing down any time soon, which is all the more reason to understand how [...]
iTunes Parental Controls and Safe Syncing
Knowing how to set parental controls on iTunes is just as important as settings parental controls on the home computer, web browser, and social networking accounts that your kids use. Because iTunes is essentially the media center for any iDevice that your child uses, making it safe for them should go hand-in-hand with making their [...]
An Internet-Safety Educational Tool That Shows Great Promise
Linda Criddle’s LOOKBOTHWAYS Foundation has always been a go-to Internet-safety resource of mine. Not only is her website filled with original content about online privacy, mobile safety, cyberbullying and other Internet concerns, but her perspective is backed by 13 years of experience as an online safety expert for Microsoft’s MSN division. Linda’s latest project, NetSkills4Life, [...]
Review: Parental Options Software
I think the steps that Parental Options has taken with their software sort of symbolizes “the future” of software as a tool to help parents keep their kids safe online. There’s no doubt that education and talking to your kids about Internet safety is, and always will be, the key to having Internet-safety smart kids, [...]
Can Social Media Help Build Self-Esteem and Social Skills Among Children?
In the midst of all the news about cyberbullying and privacy issues, it’s important to realize all of the wonderful benefits that social media has provided not only us, but our children. A recent study by Patti Valkenburg, a professor at the University of Amsterdam’s Center for Research on Children, Adolescents and the Media, found [...]
Mary Kay is a nationally-recognized Internet safety expert and the founder of 
