Giving a 10 year old his own laptop

[Mike Fishcake]

My son is recently 10 years old, and having inherited his 'technical enthusiasm' (cough) from his dad, he's shown enough ability and understanding to get his own computer, which he is getting for Christmas.

At the moment, he uses the PC which is in our lounge and basically looks at a few websites - mainly online browser games and stuff like that. It's got McAfee Internet Security on (which seems to have excellent parental controls - been using it for nearly 2 years), but he usually uses it when we're in the room with him.

What we need to do is strike the right balance between supervision and over-protectiveness.

Parental control / security software is good, but it's not infallible, and nothing is as good as actual proper education on do's and don'ts of internet usage.

So, what do you all reckon is a good list of internet/computer usage guidelines to sit down with a 10 year old boy and explain to him?

The list I've come up with so far:

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1. Many people on the internet are idiots. You'll always get some websites or people somewhere that try to be offensive/rude/argumentative/inappropriate. You don't owe them anything - if you come across anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, close that window right away and tell us. You won't get in trouble if it's someone else doing something wrong, and mistakes do happen.

2. If you see any adverts for anything that says "FREE!" on it, and it looks exciting and wonderful (free mouse cursors/icons/smileys/create a character etc) don't click on it. It will almost definitely install a load of rubbish on the computer which will make it slow down, send your information off to somewhere else or bring up loads of pop-up windows. Same goes for adverts saying "YOU HAVE WON A COMPETITION!!!! NO JOKE!!!!". I will then have to clean the computer up, which means you'll have to spend an equal amount of extra time doing house work ;-)

3. If the computer does start behaving weirdly, tell me straight away. If you find any sites that say that the computer may have a virus, or any other messages, don't try and fix it yourself. It's probably nonsense.

4. DO NOT put any drinks or food near the computer.

5. If you want to play any games or other things that need downloading instead of just playing in the internet browser, tell me first.

6. If you get any messages from McAfee or Google saying that a site may be unsafe, for the love of god, don't visit the site.

7. Most importantly, if you get any messages from anyone asking you to meet them - ESPECIALLY people you don't know - TELL US IMMEDIATELY. There are unfortunately some nasty people around that will pretend to be kids or other people. Never, ever, ever, EVER arrange to meet someone online. Treat them like you'd treat any stranger.

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So - opinions and suggestions on that please!

Bonus question: Has anyone here used Club Penguin? A couple of his friends are on it. Is it worth it? I know nothing at all about it.

By the way - I'm not installing Linux on it, or getting a Mac

[schmunk]

Bonus question: Has anyone here used Club Penguin? A couple of his friends are on it. Is it worth it? I know nothing at all about it.

[schmunk]

p.s. your list seems sensible.

[Phage]

Obviously none of mine have admin rights.
Good list. The only thing I added was to NOT fill in any forms that ask for any personal details. No names, no address, no telephone, nada. If it's something really important, then ask me, and I'll have a look.

When they get older we can start talking about porn links. But I've found that the parental controls with a bit of straight talk works wonders.

[Moby-Dick]

without wanting to sound like a linux zealot , would a netbook with a linux distro on it be a little less likly to get full of spyware ?

they do sound like common sense rules though.

I'd be very tempted to use a logging proxy as well , just in case. ?

[Mike Fishcake]

I don't know enough about Linux to be able to thoroughly maintain a machine with enough knowledge, and I can't be bothered learning

Plus there are games he likes that are windows only (and apparently don't work on WINE)

[Moby-Dick]

good point , I was thinking about a pure web browsing machine

[Zak33]

Make a full backup of the system so you can reinstall if/when it gets clogged.

Acronis 10 is good in XP and Vista ultiomate has a full image backup thingy

[VictorE]

Good list Mike thanks i'm gonna print this off for a friend of mine thats also buying a laptop for his twelve year old this christmas. Maybe the lovely people of HEXUS could add to this list of safety tips on surfing for youngsters?

[format]

I don't know enough about Linux to be able to thoroughly maintain a machine with enough knowledge, and I can't be bothered learning

Plus there are games he likes that are windows only (and apparently don't work on WINE)

I know you said no linux, but check out Jolicloud. I just installed it on my netbook, and it's absolutely great.(coming from a first time Linux user)

[daniel_owen_uk]

I would say do all those things but still keep it in the family room for a year or two yet.

You can do all those things but there is no guarding from the fact that as soon as he figures out that typing "big tits" into google brings up more than the ornithological results, he will.

[EvilMunky]

If you can get Windows 7 on it, try out the guest mode (not guest account) which is excellent for this type of thing.
Link via Lifehacker

[TheAnimus]

without wanting to sound like a linux zealot , would a netbook with a linux distro on it be a little less likly to get full of spyware ?

they do sound like common sense rules though.

I'd be very tempted to use a logging proxy as well , just in case. ?

The kid will get picked on and bullied at school.

[Georgy291]

i cough cough was on club penguin at some point, its just flash mmorpg just as penguins, its so heavily filtered that you cant even say words off idiot on it perfectly safe. i got banned off it for calling someone a muppet

[Mike Fishcake]

I would say do all those things but still keep it in the family room for a year or two yet.

You can do all those things but there is no guarding from the fact that as soon as he figures out that typing "big tits" into google brings up more than the ornithological results, he will.

When we set up the parental control software initially, me and the Mrs had a fun time typing in as many offensive/rude/risque things into the google as possible, to see how well it worked

There aren't too many false positives either, though amusingly the image filter did decide to block off one of the images on google earth, which was an area near our house. I don't know what they're implying there.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Cockfoster?