Internet Safety

It’s an understatement to say that parents are concerned about how to keep children safe on the Internet today. Just look at the statistics. One-third of teens spend more than three hours a day on the Internet outside of school hours, according to a recent poll. Boston-based Burst Media surveyed more than 1,800 teens aged thirteen to seventeen years on their Internet usage habits. Not surprisingly, three out of five admitted visiting a social networking site and nearly all from that group said they joined a social networking site and created an online profile.

What’s concerning to Internet safety experts is that profiles almost always contain pictures as well as personal blogs.

“I used to advise parents to tell their children not to put pictures [of themselves] online. Nowadays, with the popularity of MySpace.com and other social networking sites, it’s a given that kids are going to put their picture on the Internet. What I now say is that if you’re going to do that, then watch what other information you put on,” says Larry Magid, CBS.com journalist, creator of SafeKids.com, and co-author of MySpace Unraveled: A Parents Guide to Teen Social Networking. For the uninitiated parent, a social networking site is an online community where kids can link up with their friends. They can create online journals—or blogs—containing entries about their favorite bands or school subjects. The children can keep their profiles private, but they can allow their “friends” to have access and then communicate with these selected friends. The problem, however, is that often teens allow friends of friends they don’t know, access to their profile—which can give them access to their blog and anything they have written in it.

“Some kids actually post their school name, their home town, where they hang out or, as in one case, someone actually posted their cell phone number,” explains Magid.

What this means, is that parents need to get involved and in ways that require more than a sentence warning their kids to not post personal information. It’s quite easy for a teen to reply, “I know, I know mom!” and yet still reply to a friend with personal details that other friends might be able to read. And, if the teen isn’t careful, she or he could have accepted a person into the network pretending to be a teen, but who is actually an adult predator.