OS X Mountain Lion Portable Genius

Limiting Access with Parental Controls

A few of the most powerful societal influences on youngsters are the Internet, e-mail, and instant messaging. For all the wonderful content that’s available on the Internet, there’s an equal amount of horrifying content just waiting to be discovered and devoured by young eyes. The Parental Controls help protect our most impressionable citizens from some of the worst the world has to offer.

Take the time to investigate each of these settings to the fullest extent if you have children who use your computer to surf the Internet, receive e-mail, or send instant messages. As a parent, I completely understand the desire to protect your children from things that may be beyond their level of maturity and understanding.

Parental Controls is just as effective with adults as it is with children. If necessary, you can also manage the accounts of users who are inexperienced with computers, or those who, perhaps, haven’t quite grown up in other ways.

Enabling Parental Controls

To use Parental Controls, you must either create an account managed by Parental Controls or enable Parental Controls for an existing Standard account. Follow the instructions earlier in this chapter for creating a new user account. To enable Parental Controls on a current account, follow these steps:

1. Choose Apple menu→System Preferences and then click the Users & Groups icon in the System section.

2. If it is locked, click the lock icon in the lower-left corner and type an administrator ...