Children who are exposed to violence are more likely to become violent on their own according to multiple studies performed on the behaviour of children and their exposure to certain media. While online violence does not alone cause a child to become more disruptive, it is a major issue. There are several different kinds of online violence, so knowing about these different forms is effective in discovering how to block your child from accessing it. The more you know about what goes on online, the better you can prepare yourself and protect your child.

Video Games

Video game violence is not just for high-end video game systems. Video games come in all shapes and sizes and there are some rather in-depth games found online. In fact, it is possible to play thousands of game titles, ranging from just simple solitaire to games that are heavily stylized and are much closer to actual video games you might find on a video game system. Regardless of the quality of the game, a large number of these games do contain violence that you need to protect your child from.

It is very important for you to know what sort of games your child is playing, which is why looking into the violence online is helpful so you can make the right decision as to if your child should play the game or not. If you find the material to be inappropriate, you are always able to install a website blocker onto the computer system. This way, your child is not able to access the game. While you never want to be the bad guy, there are times when you simply need to protect them against content a bit more mature than what they are currently at.

News Media

The news on television can be rather tame for what is actually placed online. When you see a censored image or video clip broadcast on television, it is possible to find this content uncensored online. There is some incredibly graphic material in the news, and all of this material comes uncensored over the Internet, which can be extremely damaging to a child, should they see some of the material.

From shootings and plane crashes to other mature content that really should not be seen by anyone, the news media footage is not only going to desensitize your child, but it can also change them for the rest of their life as well. There are certain images you just are not able to unsee and are going to stick with you forever. While it is always good that your child stays up on the news, some material is just not made for your child.

With the website blocking software, you can at least block out violent news media and images so they are not able to see them. All of this is going to make it that much more desirable for your child to use the Internet and you do not need to worry as much when it comes to what they are seeing.

Violent Movies

Outside of the actual news footage and other images that are just too brutal and violent for your child to see (and for most anyone to see), violence online continues in other forms. Just about any movie is available, in some shape or form. If you want to protect your child from certain movies, you need to make sure and protect your child from what they are watching over the Internet.

Of course, there are all sorts of different video sites available online, and sometimes it can be a bit difficult to block certain ones automatically. However, you can monitor what sort of websites your child is going to through the log system of a website blocking program.

From there, if you find a website that allows your child to gain access to violent movies, you are able to go in manually and add this particular website to the blocked list. While it is up to you to decide what kind of video content your child is able to view, you should protect them from certain elements over the Internet, as the violence online can have a lasting impressing on your child. You can do all of this with the online blocking programs.

Chat

Violence comes in more forms than just visual stimulation. It can also come in text forms. Whether it is just posted information on blogs and forums or your child is talking with someone through chat service, you need to know what they are talking about and what sort of content they are being exposed to. Recently, two girls out of Wisconsin attacked the third girl with a knife and stabbed her multiple times (all there were friends), simply because of forums they had been visiting online and they thought that if they performed such actions that they would achieve a special reward.

It is very easy to influence the thought process of a child, and while this is not saying this is going to happen to your child, it is possible, as just about anything can come up through the Internet, forums and chat rooms. Due to this, it is very important for you to monitor basically every single element of what your child does online.

You do not need to sit over your child’s shoulder and watch everything they do, but with a program installed on the computer system that allows you to go over later and see everything they have done and visited online, it gives you a better game plan as to what sort of content your child is being exposed to.

With so much violence in the world, the majority of it is eventually posted on the Internet. While this is not saying your child is going to automatically go and try to look up this information, sometimes it is hard to avoid. That is why you need to know how to set up boundaries and limits to what your child accesses online. The best way to go about doing this is through the assistance of a website blocking program.

When you install this program onto the computer, you can set up different parameters, all of which are going to block out certain elements of the Internet. These programs can block out everything from violence and drugs to pornography, gambling and a wide range of other content you probably do not want your child to view. You can also go over lists of visited websites, so you always know where your child has been and what they are doing online.

Before the world of the Internet, you really only needed to know where your child is physically and what they are doing. However, now that the Internet has infiltrated the majority of homes throughout the country, you need to know where they are digitally online as well. This is often much more dangerous than anything else they can do. Thankfully though, you can protect your child and, with the right precautions, you do not need to worry about what they are doing and who they are spending their time with.