Why you should have a bit of “Techiness” as a parent in this generation

Do you know what your kids are doing online and what games they play? 

Have you ever tip-toed into your kids’ room to discover they just closed their computer screen or closed a tab as soon as they noticed your presence?

Either they were playing one of the games you have warned them not to play again or watching some videos inappropriate for their age on the internet. I have been studying various online games my boys play. I discovered that the level of violence in some of those games are not good for their sanity and emotions as kids. My kids played Roblox every time they had access to their laptop (Note: We have screen time schedule at home). Roblox is supposed to be a good game studio where they can create their own mini-games but my recent discovery will shock you.

  Photo credit: EuroKeks

                    Photo credit: Android Central

My son was just sitting beside me watching one of this games in Roblox that had the setting of an elementary school. I decided to drop my book and watch the game with him. In the setting were a boy of about 10 years old with his parents. The parents were taking him to school on the first day of school. Then, two other boys walked up to them and shot the boy’s parents. The culprits fled the scene after that. I marveled.

Another parent also reported watching her daughter’s Avatar being raped at a school playground. Leaving the avatar crying and as expected, the bad kids ran away. The woman reported that her daughter didn’t even react to the action taking place in her game because she apparently doesn’t know what it meant to be raped.

Some of these games leave terrible imprints in the mind of children. We should guide, guard and protect the children in our care from hurtful influences on the internet.

In this piece, I will show you how to have some control around the websites and gaming sites your kids visit. I also use this to block some sites I don’t want to visit when I’m working on my personal computer. You know, sometimes you just want to concentrate and work without visiting facebook and some other sites that will steal your time. No matter how much I tried to say, “Okay, I will not veer off to play games or read social media feeds until I complete what I’m doing”, I usually still find myself opening them. For some people still struggling with the demon of Pornography, this will be very useful to you. To solve this problem, just block all those sites that distracted you.

Let’s dive right into the blocking operation.

How to re-opened a closed tab or window on PC and Mac

Assuming your child closed the browser before when they noticed, or you accidentally closed your own browser, to re-open the last closed tab, do this:

Ctrl + Shift + T when using Windows PC and Command + Shift +T for Mac computer.

This will reopen the last closed tab. Repeat this process over and over to view all previously closed tabs and windows.

Why do you need to do this? Because your children’s business is your business as well. In fact, their business is more of your business than theirs. Whatever evil or good they learn at a young age will shape who they will be at old age. Our society needs more sane kids that will grow into adults. 

HOWTO BLOCK ANY WEBSITE ON EVERY BROWSER

This can be achieved by editing the host file on your computer. I know you would ask “Where the heck is the host file?”. Don’t worry, I will guide you through the process without any side effect. Thank me later.

FOR WINDOWS 7 or 10

Step 1: Open a notepad or notepad++ as an administrator

Here’s how to open notepad as an administrator;

Notepad is found under All Apps -> Windows Accessories. Right-click to select “Run as Administrator”. You can also just type Notepad in your Windows Search space when you see notepad appear, Right-click to select “Run as Administrator”.

Step 2: Find the path of the host file

• Go to the notepad you just opened,
• Click on File –> Open –> Local Disk (C:)
• Select Windows –> System32 –> Drivers –> etc
• When you open etc, it will be empty. In the bottom-right side of the etc window, change the Text Documents to All Files.
• Then, you the host file will become visible in the list of files in etc folder.
• Double-click on host file to open.

Step 3: Edit the host file

• Place your cursor at the bottom of the host file. Assuming you want to block facebook, twitter, Roblox, Fortnite (one of the most dangerous games for kids), etc. The website for Fortnite is www.epicgames.com/fortnite
• Type 127.0.0.1 facebook.com twitter.com roblox.com epicgames.com
• The list of websites you need to block should only be separated by a space. NO COMMA. NO FULL STOP AT THE END.
• SAVE
• Try opening those websites you just added to the host file on any browser on the computer where you just performed this operation. You will see a message like this: “This message is not available”.

FOR MAC COMPUTERS

• Click anywhere on the desktop. Hit the Command + Space Bar keys.
• Spotlight Search will appear. Type in Terminal in the Spotlight Search bar and hit enter
• In the terminal, Type sudo nano /etc/hosts
• Hit Enter
• Let’s try blocking the two gaming sites we blocked earlier in Windows
• In the next terminal screen, place your cursor on a new line after the line in the document
• Type 127.0.0.1 roblox.com
• Enter next line and type 127.0.0.1 epicgames.com
• After entering all the websites on your list, hit Command + S to save the changes you made.

LET’S TEST IF THIS WORKS

Open Safari orGoogle Chrome or any browser on the Mac computer, search for the blocked websites. You will see that it’s been blocked. Yay! we did it.

Now, I know you would ask, “What about how to block the same content on a mobile phone?”.

Many kids spend so much time on YouTube these days. Let them use YouTube for Kids which has inbuilt safety features that filter out trashy contents so kids don’t have access to harmful contents. For teenagers, they will definitely not be using YouTube for kids.

You can still block hate content, terrorist videos like beheading and other terrible videos on your adolescent’s or teenager’s YouTube app. Read my next post on How to block Adult content on mobile phones here.

Let me know if this post helps you in any way. Send your questions in the comment section below. Subscribe to get notified when new blog posts are published.

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