Setting up Safe Searches

We are all one click away from being pulled into an information portal, filled with erroneous, distracting and at times dangerous material. We are also one click away from making a mistakenly sharing information not intended for a wider audience, in the form of an email, a wall post, text or chat message.   We've all heard the admonition "think before you post." The new mantra should be "think before you click." It's hard to stay true to this statement in practice, especially as we endure a fast-paced, real-time information onslaught.

Don't Fool Yourself every Search Engine has a different Safe Search button hidden within their  search engine or app browser. 

Google Safe Search for Images

This can be found on iOS

Here's how Google describes the new settings: "In the SafeSearch Filtering section, click the checkbox to filter sexually explicit video and images from Google Search result pages, as well as results that might link to explicit content. If you choose to leave it unchecked, we will provide the most relevant results for your query and may serve explicit content when you search for it." So Google may show explicit images, but only if it's obvious that you're searching for it. No algorithm is perfect, so you'll probably find many examples when this doesn't work as intended.  

YouTube Safe Search for iOS

Here are a few tips to help parents control the content that their child views on YouTube, and on the web, in general. 

Filtering on OS X

The quickest and easiest way to make YouTube kid-friendly is to enable Safety Mode. Safety Mode will screen out potentially objectionable content, so children can view YouTube in a web browser without unsavory videos and vulgar comments floating to the top. You can turn on Safety Mode by scrolling to the bottom of any YouTube page and clicking the drop-down menu in the "Safety" section. If you are logged into your YouTube account, you can lock this feature so it is always enabled. If you have multiple browsers, you have to open each browser and repeat this process to make sure Safety Mode is turned on in each one.

Yahoo Safe Search for iOS

To turn SafeSearch on or off scroll down to the bottom of the page. In the lower right hand corner tap the option to turn SafeSearch on or off. Depending on your current setting it will say either, "On/ Turn Off" or "Off/ Turn On."

NOTE: By default SafeSearch will be turned on. If you turn SafeSearch off you will need to agree that you are okay with potentially viewing mature content in the search results.

Safety Resources

Google Tools

Google Search App