Giving a 10 year old his own laptop

[momo77735]

i feel its a bad idea because in 2 years time hell be in high school where they teach sex education in the 1st year and so hell be more aware. This could make him look at pornographic material online. This in turn would make him less social and less keen to hang around with friends and such. I feel a personal laptop at such a young age is a terrible idea.

[Mike Fishcake]

Well the main thing is, you're not over-reacting.

You're 5 months too late anyway

He's already had sex education to a certain extent at primary school, and he's not turned into a drivelling and reclusive maniac. We make him do outside activities anyway, and restrict his time on it.

I think you're worrying too much. You're talking about things that could happen, rather than things that will. Sending him outside to play could cause him to meet people who do bad things. Letting him read books could give him ideas about how to do things that are a bit naughty.

At 10 years old, you've got to start giving them a bit of responsibility in short bursts. If anything, I worry that we're too over protective of him some times.

I don't doubt he will, in time, look for ways to bypass the parental controls. But let's face it - he's a boy. He's going to grow up in to a teenager. He's going to be looking for ways to "bypass" stuff we tell him to do in real life. We've just got to keep an eye on him and get the balance right between freedom and strictness.

Did you ever do something you weren't supposed to do as a kid, or did you always, always be 100% good?

Also, if bypassing control software to look at naughty pictures is the worst thing we've got to worry about regarding his upbringing, then I'm not overly concerned.

[Infinite]

Just me that got their first computer in their room when they were 10 years old with no firewall, no anti virus, no parental controls and a 56k dial up connection? :3

[repon]

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

Right the point a full image backup of system is very very important. In this case Acronis works well I prefer to use Norton Ghost because Ghost gives me a quick restore option. I can make ready a corporate level workstation within 10 minutes.

[ipwiz]

I'd still go for a big pc or laptop tied to a table in communial walk by area of house. Also need to put some limits on - I put a wifi just for kids that come on for 2 hours a day.

[morfeus]

That was a good list, I might have to try to adapt it for my kids, too.

I would agree that its probably better to have the laptop somewhere communal (which kinda defeats the portability of it) for a while at least.

[chrestomanci]

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

This is good advice for everyone. I wish I had followed it, my laptop got a glass of wine inside the keyboard last weekend. While I managed to get the laptop working, 10% of the keys on the keyboard are dead.

With this in mind, would a desktop be a better choice than a laptop?

If you spill a drink into a desktop keyboard, then a new one will only be tenner, and you can often wash a keyboard to remove the dried on residue. If you spill a drink into a laptop keyboard then it will hit the motherboard and could kill the whole system.

Also a desktop will be easier to repair or upgrade over the years, and cheaper to buy in the first place.

[Mike Fishcake]

Only just seen these last 3 replies! Unfortunately we only live in a small house, so there aren't really any communal rooms other than the living room, kitchen or bathroom... (and the main PC is in the living room)

Seems to be going OK so far anyway. I occasionally give McAfee a test to see if it's still up to the job

[ahmed87]

i am against it. get a desktop,in the living room .

[live2give]

askinf for ttrouble if you ask me, put restriction on the laptop but most of all EDUCATE him on the dangers its the only way to stay safe.

[Li4m79]

i'm building lightweight desktop for my 10 year old, and I hate to be like BIG BROTHER, but i will be watching what he does very closely.

I'll be putting time constrictions on his internet, and it will be put on the home network and monitored regularly. I know naive enough just now to click on anything that says "free" etc, so all I can do is keep a close eye on things..

He will mainly just be playing train simulators (thank god/WTF!!!) so hopefully it shouldn't be too bad

[Mike Fishcake]

Well, 8 months in and no problems at all. No spyware/adware, viruses or infections of any kind. He mostly uses it in the living room anyway. Plus, he knows exactly what will happen to it if he does anything wrong with it

A combination of parental supervision, filtering software and bringing him up responsibly

[chimrod]

giving a 10 yr old a laptop

pros - greater computer literacy,

cons - porn, broken laptop, no increased typing skills (wil never open word, excel, or powerpoint), potential to be groomed by a crazed 80yr old man, and then biggest con of all; twitter.

if you want to give your child a computer, give them a decent desktop where they can play games, this will stop most of the cons above. (unless he plays WorldOfWarcraft, where he will be groomed by many millions of old men).

sorry to be so negative, freedom of speech is a wonderfull thing.

regards,

chimrod

[TheWizard]

I think nowadays computer literacy is not an issue as much as the threats lurking around. I personally don't think its a great idea but if you have the laptop restricted to the living room and you can monitor (without needing to spy) what your child does and whom he/she speaks to then I think its not so bad. Especially if they spend that time to learn things. I remember I got my first computer at age 13 and then dialup was just picking up with NTLWORLD - the computer was always in the living room and I would mostly spend time trying to be like my elder cousin (whos a programmer) and write little programs like quizes or word games.

Nowadays far too many distractions with the likes of twitter, facebook, myspace, porn and the list can go on and on.

[Mike Fishcake]

giving a 10 yr old a laptop

pros - greater computer literacy,

cons - porn, broken laptop, no increased typing skills (wil never open word, excel, or powerpoint), potential to be groomed by a crazed 80yr old man, and then biggest con of all; twitter.

if you want to give your child a computer, give them a decent desktop where they can play games, this will stop most of the cons above. (unless he plays WorldOfWarcraft, where he will be groomed by many millions of old men).

sorry to be so negative, freedom of speech is a wonderfull thing.

regards,

chimrod

Nice to see this is still raising debate over 10 months later

OK, taking these one at a time (from my point of view anyway, can't speak for other people)

Porn - filtering software appears to be working so far! No, it really does.
Broken laptop - Nope. He knows how to treat his stuff with respect. No hardware or software issues to report.
No increased typing skills (will never open word, excel or powerpoint) - He happily uses Word, powerpoint and publisher. Not excel though . His skills have improved.
Potential to be groomed by a crazed 80 year old man - He's not stupid. Besides, the only places he
Twitter - Erm, not sure what your point is with that one (and why it's a con) but he doesn't use that (Twitter, FB and other social / chat sites are blocked anyway)

A lot of what you mention comes down to actual personality and knowing how to behave, rather than restricted to merely IT. As others have said - dealing with it on a personal level is the most important aspect, but it doesn't hurt to have technological backup.

Edit: the only chat things he uses are Club Penguin and Windows Live Messenger. His messenger account is set up with family settings, which means all new contacts have to be authorised by me before they appear in his list.

[Lucio]

Well, 8 months in and no problems at all. No spyware/adware, viruses or infections of any kind. He mostly uses it in the living room anyway. Plus, he knows exactly what will happen to it if he does anything wrong with it

A combination of parental supervision, filtering software and bringing him up responsibly

You need to give my mum a lesson in responsible IT parenting they've gone through 6 laptops in 3 years by not following any sensible advice on parental controls. I even sat there once whilst someone tried to groom my 12 year old sister (though they're not stupid mind you, they did just call him a poopoo head and blocked him but still)