To Kindle or not to Kindle (for my teen)

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  • October 25, 2011 at 4:18 am
    Sue
    Participant

    My 13yo daughter has mentioned several times that she is planning to ask her dad to buy her a Kindle for Christmas. Putting aside my own jealousy at the thought of it Wink….I am wondering if she should have one and how I can keep an eye on things.

    A little background: DD had an email account I set up for her, and I have always required that I have the password. I told her I could check her account at any time as well.  Those were the rules.  Also, our computer is in a public place in our home.  A few months ago, due to a comment she made, I felt I should check her email account.  I discovered one or two emails from an inappropriate website.  There were also a few searches showing in our browser history related to the inappropriate material.  So, I immediately shut down her email access and talked to her about it.  I didn’t feel she was being completely honest with me about it, so I have continued restricting her computer access for awhile.

    So, I do know there can be internet access through a Kindle (am I correct on that?), and I’m wondering if those of you who use them can advise me on “parental controls” regarding the Kindle.  Any comments or suggestions?

    Thanks,

    Sue

    October 25, 2011 at 1:44 pm
    suzukimom
    Participant

    I do have a Kindle – not sure I can answer your questions fully….   I have a Kindle 3 (ie, it is a year old) so the answers may be different for the brand new ones.

    The Kindle 3 does have an experimental web browser.  It doesn’t support flash (ie, video) and it also doesn’t follow a link that would open another copy of the browser.  Pictures of course are black and white.  I have used it to access various message boards and email.

    I don’t know of any parental controls.  By buying the wifi only, it would limit the internet access to places like your house (if you have wifi) and places like the library, mcdonalds, or other places with free wifi.  But as you have had some problems at home already that could still be a problem.

    Personally, I would contact Amazon and ask what they suggest.

     

    October 25, 2011 at 3:36 pm
    sbkrjulie
    Participant

    I have a Kindle as well. The internet connection for web browsing is there and is very slow. Not great quality either.  I do wish they would make it pasword protected as I would like to get my elementary-age children a Kindle this Christmas.

    October 25, 2011 at 9:54 pm
    Doug Smith
    Keymaster

    You can use a Kindle without wifi and only transfer books to it from your computer. So you could protect it by having a password on your wifi network that only you know and then the Kindle could not get on the Internet at home. (Well, unless there is an unprotected wifi network within range of your house from a neigbor or something.)

    As others have said, it could still get on the Internet from any public wifi location so you would have to also control where the Kindle was used.

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