Techie Homeschoolers

Nov 22 2009

Is Google search safe for our kids?

Published by Techie Homeschooler at 6:43 am under Internet Safety

I must admit…it does bother me to have my daughter do a “Google” search, although I am right over her shoulder when she does. Search Engine for Kids

There is always the fear that any parent may have – and that’s: pop ups and unsolicited ads.

Furthermore, God forbid our children click on a WRONG link, a trashy URL that takes them to some porn site. We would never forgive ourselves if our dear children’s innocence were crushed because of this.

Although I don’t want to revoke her Google searching priviliges, I’m just too cautious of a mommy to simply send her away to “Google it!”.

NyGirl LOVES to research. She thinks of an idea that really interests her, and next thing you know she wants permission to get on the computer and look up more information about it.

“Mom, can I google it? PLEASE???”

What do I say to that? Here I have a child whose unsatiable thirst for knowledge has landed her on a quest for answers to every problem she thinks of. Somehow, dictionary.com and thesaurus sites are not enough. Of course not…we need GOOGLE.

Okay, not really.

I am not too sure about the safeties of Google for my dear kids, so I began to do a little research of my own for search engines which are safe for kids.

Among these are:

Yahoo Kids – EXCELLENT resource, by the way!
Kids.gov
Fact Monster
Britannica.com
The Awesome Library
ALA’s Great Websites for Kids

Or…if this is too limited of an approach, you can go to sites like Ask Jeeves, MSN Search, or even Google, and under Content Filtering, select the options for “safe search” mode. There is a wonderful article which breaks down the different search engines, how they rank in comparing commercialized ads versus appealing content to children and relevance to the child.

So at least Google is not completely out of the question for us. We can give search engines a “go”, so long as we’re on safe mode.