It is hard to oversee what your children are doing online when you’re not there.  Setting parental controls is one way of restricting access and keeping the online experience to be safe, fun, and productive.

Of course, nothing is entirely fail-safe — and you’ll still want to have conversations about making good choices. Only you can determine the level of protection you need for your family.  Here’s  a few tips to help: 

Operating Systems

• Both Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS come with built-in parental controls. When you create user accounts, you can select different protections for different users. To get the most benefits, you need to use the most updated version of the operating system.

• The Android operating system doesn’t have built-in controls — but there are many parental-control apps for Android.

• Operating-system parental controls work well because they apply globally to everything the computer accesses.

Web Browsers

• Browsers — that software you use to go online — offer different ways of filtering out websites you don’t want your kids to visit. Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer all allow you to type in specific websites and domains (which apply to whole categories of sites, such as porn) that you want to block.

• If you use Firefox, you need to download an add-on, because the basic browser does not offer content filters.

• Browser-specific solutions don’t carry over to other browsers. So if you have more than one browser on your machine, you need to enable filters on all of them.

Kids' Browsers

• Sometimes called “walled gardens,” these are protected environments that fill up your entire screen (so kids can’t click out of them). They’re sort of a cross between an operating system and a browser designed specifically for kids with games, pre-approved websites, email, and various activities.  Examples include  Zoodles and Kido’z.

• Kids’ browsers are typically free for the basic version, but they cost money (usually a monthly subscription fee) for a premium upgrade. The ones that are entirely free usually offer content that the company has licensed from a kid-friendly provider — and may display ads or promotional content.

Computer-software controls

• These are the classic, full-featured parental-control programs that let you block websites, impose screen-time limits, and monitor online activity (for example, which sites your kid visits). 
  

• Many of these programs also offer added security against malware and viruses and will send you a summary of what your kid did online.  Because they are so full-featured, computer-software-controls programs carry a high initial cost plus a monthly subscription fee.

• Products in this category include NetNanny, Qustodio, Safe Eyes, and BSecure.

Mobile devices

• Some mobile devices have rudimentary parental controls — but the options vary a lot depending on what you have.  At the very least, without downloading anything extra, you may be able to prevent unwanted purchases (including in-app purchases), restrict what kind of content can be downloaded (M-rated games, for example), and delete or hide apps and functions you don’t want your kid to use (such as video chatting).
  

• Amazon’s growing family of Kindle Fire tablets come preloaded with Kindle FreeTime parental controls. (Learn how to set parental controls on the iPhone and how to lock down your iPad.)

• To add content filters to your kids’ mobile device, you’ll need to disable its existing browser and download a kid-friendly browser or a content-filtering app such as Mobicip(Apple) or  AVG Family Safety (Windows).
  

Home networking

• Having trouble managing what children access on their mobile devices?  If so, you may want a more robust solution. Take a look at your Internet router — that thing that brings the Internet into your house.  Consider a software program such as  OpenDNS, which works with your existing router to filter Internet content.

• A router-based solution prevents unwanted content from entering your home.