1. Personal information stays personal. Teach kids not to share passwords or give up information
2. Make sure your child doesn’t spend all of his or her time on the computer
3. Parents should try to keep the computer in a shared family space. Make sure you pop your head in often and see what they’re doing
4. Learn about computers so you can enjoy them together with your kids
5. Make sure that your children feel comfortable coming to you in the event that there’s an online problem. If they worry that you’ll take away their computer or blame them for causing trouble they won’t come to you until it’s too late.
6. Keep kids out of chat rooms or IRcs unless they are monitored
7. Consider having them sign an acceptable use policy and let them know they’ll lose computer privileges if they abuse rules
8. Help them find a balance between computing and other activities
9. Know their online friends, buddies and who they email. Know the sites they frequent
10. Warn them that things said on the Internet take on a life of their own and travel very quickly
11. Warn them not to take on roles and personae like “I’m a 12 year old boy named Billy” when they’re not
12. Warn your kids to be suspicious of people they don’t know. For example be suspicious of someone who lures you into a highly personal conversation or asks for photos without bothering to get to know you
13. Own the master account with your online service. As the master account holder you can use the parental control tools that are part of most services
14. Know what they do at their friends’ houses, especially on the Internet. Many kids will find themselves at houses whose Internet rules are different than their own
15. Insist they use the privacy options available on browsers, search engines, IM and social networking sites.
