Unlike a real community where it is easy to tell your children where the safe areas of town are and where the bad ones are., the Internet is unorganized. This means it is easy to stumble upon inappropriate sites even if you are looking for information that is very appropriate and safe. This is especially a concern to parents with young children who are learning about the Internet.

The most important thing that you can do is to supervise your young child if he / she is online and to talk to them about what is safe and what is not.

Some search engines offer kid friendly searches or "safe searches" where the content of each page has been rated in some fashion. The link below will take you to Kid Search Tools which is an excellent place to start. Supervision is still necessary because the links on pages change and a safe site can still lead to an unsafe one.

Kids Search Tools: www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm

Kids Click: http://www.kidsclick.org/

Worlds of Searching: www.worldsofsearching.org