Vodafone proffers parental pointers

Get off the internet and talk to your kids, silly

Vodafone's latest site is aimed at educating parents about what their anklebiters get up to online, basically telling them to keep an eye on the little blighters.

Vodafone has created the Parent's Guide site with help from parental-guidance site Mumsnet, and provides information about how children interact with the internet at different ages, along with a one-page summary for busy parents. This last can itself be summarised by the usual "spend some time with your kids".

The site has lots of the usual information about the dangers of web surfing and sexting and the like, along with a quiz where parents can see how informed they are about the digital revolution (at which El Reg scored a disappointing 62 per cent), and links to videos showing how inappropriate photographs posted to the internet can fall into the hands of the working classes.

While the site is carefully non-critical of other social networking and messaging services, when discussing its own service the operator can't help pointing out that "Vodafone takes mobile and internet safety very seriously ... Other members won’t be able to see [a child's] name and picture unless they change the default settings."

But while content filtering and strong passwords might be useful, every page comes down to advising parents to spend more time with their kids learning what it is they're doing, demonstrating that when it comes to consuming one's free time nothing beats a couple of children. ®