Question:

Our eight year-old son likes net games, but he has also learnt to search for themes and pages that children like to visit. Do you have any good advice on net surfing?

Answer from Kids and Media’s advisor:

It’s great that you’re interested and involved. It could be a good idea to sit with the youngest kids when they are online searching for things. If nothing else, it’s a good advice to place the computer in a place where adults tend to be. I think it’s important that you help your child develop a healthy critical sense towards sources: What does the webpage contain? Can I trust the content? Can I trust the sender? To get more precise hits when using search engines it’s a good idea to use more search words. It’s also a good idea to limit the search to only British sites. Also, the kids should learn to read through the text that comes up at each hit before choosing whether or not to click on the link. The small text that comes up gives a clue on what the page contains.

Here are some links to search engines specially tailored for children:

http://www.askkids.com (search engine for children made by Ask.com)

http://quinturakids.com (Quintura)

http://kids.yahoo.com (Yahoo’s search engine for kids)

http://www.kidsclick.org (School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at Kent State University)

 

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