Posted by Caroline Curtin
Policy Counsel, U.S. Government Affairs
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance, held a hearing on “Protecting Youths in an Online World.” On behalf of Microsoft, Julie Inman-Grant and I attended the hearing to support Microsoft’s continued commitment to finding ways to keep families safer online. Among other topics, there was an increased focus on the risks to the teen audience, and what the industry and others can do to increase awareness of risks and tools for this demographic and their parents.
Today, the Windows Live Family Safety team blogged about what’s new with Family Safety, and it was exciting to read about how Family Safety is increasing its effort to not only keep younger children safer online, but teens as well. In the post, Microsoft Senior Product Manager, Phil Sohn, blogs about how he uses Family Safety to facilitate safer social networking for his own teenagers. Here’s part of what Phil has to say in the post:
As a parent of two teenage boys myself, knowing who their online friends are is just as important to me as knowing whose house they’re hanging out at. When my boys were younger, I used Windows Live Family Safety to manage their contact list so that only people I added to their contact list could send them email or instant messages. Now that they are teenagers, they manage their own contact list, but I still use this feature to see their new contacts and ask about their new friend, just as I would about a new friend at school.
To read the full blog post, go to What’s new with Family Safety on the Windows Live team blog.