Parents get another online safety resource from Google Family Safety Center

Family safety is important to me in so many ways. My husband is a firefighter, and you can bet that our smoke detector batteries are checked once a month. Similarly, I try to keep on top of information about online safety for our children. That’s why I was so interested in the launch of the Google Family Safety Center last week.

Google apparently wants to keep up with the other companies offering families various family protection programs. I checked it out, and I'm pretty pleased with what I found.

Google Family Safety Center features

Safe Search: On the tools page, Google talks about the ins and outs of their safety offerings. Did you know that Google offers a safe search feature? You can opt in to the safe search function and remove all sexually explicit search results from your Google searches. I can see how that would help for families who have children who regularly use Google. Sometimes some really child inappropriate results pop up when I’m looking for some really boring things. You can turn on safe search in your search settings.

Search lock: For those who fear that a tech-savvy teen might turn off the safe search, Google also offers the Safe Search Lock.

YouTube safety: The tools page also lets you know how to turn on safe search on your phone as well as how to turn on YouTube safety mode.

Reporting abuse and sharing: The Family Safety Center also helps you report abuse at sites like YouTube, Buzz, Picasa Web Albums and and Blogger. The Center also explains how to best set your controls for sharing so that your family members aren’t sharing too much information.

Tips for parents: Probably two of the best things about the Family Safety Center are the bits of advice from the partners and tips for parents, the latter of which has some great videos. In fact, the links on the resources page are equally awesome, including the video for Kate’s Very Public Party. Probably a must-watch for all teens... and their parents.

I strongly suggest the Family Safety Center for those who are actively researching ways to keep their families safe while online. Having easy access to such important information all in one space is a good thing!

Do you have any online safety advice?

Jenna Hatfield, aka @FireMom on Twitter, also writes at Stop, Drop & Blog and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. She works as a freelance writer and newspaper photographer.