eGuide Archives: An Introduction to Online Safety: Update

An Introduction to Online Safety: Update

June is Internet Safety Month. This week we take another look at our inaugural issue of the Child Protection eGuide, "An Introduction to Online Safety" See Justice Department Internet Safety Month

One of the best things you can do for your children is to expose them to the technological resources of the modern world. Like most things in life, however, your children need your support, your presence and your guidance to navigate the wonders of the world wide web safely.

Your children will be approached by a sexual predator on the internet. Where will they be? And where will you be? What will they do? There are three questions you must be able to answer now. In many ways, the answer to the first two questions may shape the answer to the last and most important one. Your children need to be near you when on the internet. In the kitchen or family room–not in their bedroom or a friend's house. Young children should not have internet access without a parent physically present.

That predator is much more likely to be an older boy than a middle-aged sexual offender. See newsletter/vol3_iss49. Nationally, 23.2% of ALL reported sexual assaults are committed by children. See newswise.com. Because child on child crime is the least likely crime to be reported to law enforcement, it is estimated that 40% of all sexual assaults (not just assaults against children) are committed by children under the age of 18.

Online "chat" rooms are another danger children face. According to the German child-protection organization, jugendschutz.net, sexual harassment of minors in chat rooms on the Internet is a daily occurrence. As spelled out in its child-protection booklet, "Chatten ohne Risiko?" [Chatting without Risk ?], 160 of 200 children polled reported having been subjected to sexual harassment at one or more of these virtual meeting places. The booklet presents the results of an online poll undertaken by the portal Blinde Kuh [Blind Man's Buff], a search engine for children supported by Germany's Federal Ministry for Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

You also need to be aware that you child will be exposed to pornography on the internet. Often, the first instance of a child viewing pornography is accidental. Pornographers often buy misspellings of popular kids' sites like Disney names. Additionally, pedophiles use pornography to groom a child for future sexual abuse. In addition, you need to understand that top porn sites have three and a half times the number of hits as the top internet search engines. See news.zdnet.co.uk. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that 68,000,000 daily searches on those top search engines are looking for more porn sites. See newsletter/vol1_iss3. For more on protecting a child from the dangers of internet pornography we suggest you visit our online safety guide at childprotectionprogram.org/online_safety or Donna Rice Hughes' site at protectkids.com

Although they are sometimes somewhat clumsy and always less than perfect, internet filters do provide some level of protection from the worst of what is available online. Filtering software is improving, but may still block some legitimate sites and allow some bad ones through. Free filtering software is available online at safefamilies.org. A good review of commercially available filters is online at internet-filter-review.

No matter how sophisticated it may be, good internet software is no substitute for good and active parenting.

Children need to understand that the Internet is a public forum. Everything posted there, thanks to sites like waybackmachine (the internet archives), is available for quick view by anyone forever. Nothing on the internet is truly private, and nothing truly private should ever be posted there.

Finally, parents need to understand that the way children interact with each other has changed dramatically in the last dozen years. Cell phones, text messages, instant messaging and social networking sites are the "normal" ways teens and tweens interact with each other on a daily basis now. They share snapshots, videos, gossip, moods and other private and impulsive information that used to be only verbal and ephemeral in formats that are both more public and more permanent than they realize.

Social networking sites like MySpace.com and Facebook can present a specific danger to children. So much so that next week's entire issue is devoted to the subject. Last July, MySpace deleted 29,000 registered sex offenders from its site, after previously purging 7,000 users last June. See newsletter/vol5_iss47. And that's just the 36,000 sex offenders who signed up using their real name, age and address–it doesn't count the predators posing as other children in an attempt to meet and groom child victims. You not only need to know if your children have social networking sites, you need to visit them regularly. You also need to visit "friends'" sites. More on that next week.

Reminder of the week: We recommend that you check your child's internet usage history at least 4 times a year. It is time to do so now. If you need help with the history feature of Windows Explorer, visit windows/howto/history. Once you have done this, if you catch inappropriate material that was intentionally viewed, an older teen will probably start clearing history. If the history is being cleared regularly, your child is deliberately doing things online that they do not want you to know about. It is a warning sign that you need tracking software.