Allow your children access only to Internet "playgrounds"

HOW IT WORKS: Internet playgrounds are sites that offer, often for free, kid-friendly information and activities in a controlled environment. Parents can set their kids' browser to automatically start at Bonus.com's home page, for example. Once there, kids are essentially locked into a closed universe, with access only to the kid-appropriate material within Bonus.com's site.

PROS: These are wonderful for younger children; there's plenty of content to keep them busy, the material is usually fresh, and they'll feel like they're surfing the Web proper.

CONS: These sites are generally not so great for kids older than eight or 10. Not only will they find much of the content beneath them, but they'll also likely be savvy enough to escape their closed borders quite easily.

BOTTOM LINE: With certain kids, these sites are worth checking out. In addition to Bonus.com, we like Zeeks.com and MaMaMedia.com, both of which also offer free, self-contained surfing. There are great subscription sites as well: Disney's Club Blast ($40/year) and JuniorNet ($9.95/month) are two of the best.

Similarly, families that have America Online can create their own playground by setting its controls to block access to the Internet completely and other areas of the service selectively. AOL provides an enormous number of kid-safe, non-Internet resources, including homework help areas, monitored chat rooms and virtual kids' clubs.