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20 great websites for children

June 4th, 2008

There has been great concern of late as to the content of some websites that are targetting children and young adults. It is becoming increasingly more difficult for parents to monitor exactly what their children are accessing on the web.

New guidelines introduced in February 2008 now requires content providers to ’signpost’ material that may be deemed as unsuitable for children, i.e. using a pop up warning box. The guidelines have been endorsed by the BBC, Channel 4, Bebo, Google and Yahoo, but personally I’m not sure how effective this will be. Parents can’t supervise their children 100% of the time they are on the internet and surely children will just ignore the pop up box.

A report by the National Consumer Council reviewed 40 websites that are popular with children and found that users were being exposed to more than 200 ads. It covered activity across sites like CBeebies, Neopets, YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, eBay and Lime Wire. Many of the ads were advertising dating and gambling and other products or services prohibited to children under 16. However, many of the sites are not specifically aimed at children so it is very hard to regulate this activity.

On the back of this The Telegraph have listed their top 20 websites for children and families. Some of the sites like CBeebies, Mr Men, and Nickelodeon are aimed at younger children whilst other sites like How Stuff Works, Guinness World Records, Cool Reads and Funology are aimed at older children and are educational and fun.

One really useful website for parents is Travelling with Children which has some great tips on where to holiday, how to travel and some very useful products.

Entry Filed under: advice, children