Household Technology Rules for Kids?

An anonymous reader asks: "My wife and I are in the process of adopting kids- We're hoping to adopt older boys (8 and up) from within the US. We've gone through the state mandated courses, but those courses don't really cover how to limit the kids with respect to technology (the Internet, TV content filtering, cell phones, MP3 players, etc). The latest strong potential son is a 14 year old child that is computer aware. I do not want to completely shelter the child, but I do want to establish boundaries- for example, I'm not going to install filtering software on his computer, but the computer will be in a public place in the house." How would you control a child's exposure to new technologies, especially when a few of those technologies are bundled with inherent dangers in addition to their great advantages (like the Internet)? "I want to give him the freedom to learn and be creative, but also try to avoid the nastiness on the net (like the RIAA). I want him to have the freedom not just to play on the computer, but to truly use it. From everything I've been told about the kids in the foster system, they do best with a structured environment- something predictable and stable, so I think a set of rules for him to start with would be good. I'm asking for some ideas for appropriate rules/boundaries for kids, including things to watch for, and appropriate punishments (something akin to 'you broke the server, so you'll have to rebuild it, with dad's help')."

Comments

Re:Most important rule!

[Kesch]

FATHER: Son what is that your looking at on the Internet?

KID(startled): Dad, it's uhh... it's not what it looks like. I clicked on a link by accident, I didn't mean to go there.

FATHER: I'm not talking about the site; I don't care about that. I'm talking about your browser. How could you? How could you use IE? I thought I had raised you properly to surf porn with a secure browser, but I see where I've failed. This is the last straw; I'm putting Linux on the machine.

KID: But, what about my video games?

FATHER: You'll just have to spend all your time signing petitions for Linux ports or sacrifice a virgin to get them to run with Wine.