Children on the Internet - What Are They Really Doing When You're Not Around?
The Internet is truly the information highway of the world today. Anything you want to know can be found with a few strokes of the keyboard. Our schools promote its use for our children's assignments; and also teach kids how to adapt it into their everyday lives. If you have a cell phone (who doesn't?), the Internet is at your fingertips through this device as well. We have 
emails, text messaging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter...the list goes on forever. My kids are 18 and 22 years old. They have been known to have between 2000 and 3000 text messages per month...EACH! Just to mention they are both very successful and did very well in school; so let us not jump to any conclusions. This is the way of the world today. Communicating is everyone's #1 concern. Almost everyone has a PC and a cell phone. It's really pretty amazing if you sit back and think about it compared to 10 years ago.
But, there is a down side to all this progress and technology. This is what we need to really focus on. Allow me to give you an example...
If you watch the news or read the newspaper you must have seen the stories of young children who are preyed upon and/or stalked by disturbed adults on the Internet...Since it is easy to hide behind a screen name and not have to give up your identity or appearance, these slimy individuals have found a virtual playground with a never ending supply of prey. Most times they take the ID of another youngster to befriend the target. They post a fake picture and a fake profile. Then after a few days of small talk they know more personal info than you can possibly imagine.
Another scenario is the on line "love story"...Boy meets girl on net, they talk and exchange info, after several weeks they decide that their relationship needs to reach the next level...An out of the way meeting place is set up...When the unsuspecting teen arrives, the other young teen turns out to be a pedophile... There are several different scenarios for the way this meeting ends. We will pray it ends without any harm coming to the naive teen.
Last example....My friend gets a new PC. He is totally confused on how to use it; but decides to take a few night courses to get better acquainted with Windows and how to do some basic maneuvering around the web. He is reading the Sunday papers and sees there is a sale on a set of workout sweats at Dicks Sporting Goods. He decides to go on line and investigate. He goes to his desktop and clicks on the Google icon. He types in "D-i-c-k-s" and hits Enter...Oh Boy!! Surprise,Surprise!! After a frantic phone call I set him straight and set his content level to medium so he would be safely warned from now on. I must admit I was laughing uncontrollably, though.
As you can see, even though the net is a vital part of our everyday lives, we must monitor what our family and especially our children are using it for. More importantly we must know who they are interacting with and most importantly what type of information they are both giving out and also receiving on today's popular social networks.
Fortunately there is a fabulous software product available to monitor your child's activity while you are away. It is relatively inexpensive and can be found below in my resource box. If we all work together we can put a stop to online predators; and make the internet a safe and fun place for the whole family.
