Staying Safe in Cyberland
Back in the late ’80s my mom got her first personal computer. It was a big clunker. The monitor was about the size of today’s 20″ TVs, but with only 13 inches of actual screen space. There was no high speed internet, just dial up. It didn’t even have Windows. No, it had MS DOS and you had to get in to programs by typing the name at the command prompt.
But I loved it. I was an only child of divorced parents. I spent the summers with my mom, a thousand miles away from my friends. I was also very shy and didn’t make friends easily. So while my mom was at work during the days, I would sit in front of the television watching soaps or cruise the internet on mom’s new computer.
In that time there was no such thing as AOL or Netzero. If I wanted to get on the internet I used Prodigy. What I really liked about Prodigy was chatrooms. I was too shy to go outside and meet some face-to-face friends, but it was easy to make friends online. I met quite a few people and talked to them daily.
Back in that day nobody was worried about online predators or pornography or cyber-bullying. It never even occurred to us that adults would pretend to be kids in a chatroom and I don’t remember anybody ever being mean to me online, just to be mean.
It’s a very different story today.
Now an adult neighbor you thought you could trust may create a fake MySpace account to find out what your child is saying about their child. An innocent game of UNO on Xbox 360 Live can turn in to an awful display of nudity or drugs. And we’ve seen enough of Chris Hansen’s To Catch A Predator on MSNBC to know there are some sickos out there preying on our children.
When my kids started getting on the internet and created their first social networking profile, I made them sign an internet contract. We revisit that contract often so we are sure the kids understand the rules. We make it clear that if these rules are not followed they will lose their computer privileges and possibly other privileges. And we already have tracking software installed on their computers, although I rarely access it. I find it’s a fine line between keeping them safe, trusting them and still respecting their privacy. I also created my own profiles on MySpace, Facebook and MyYearbook and had the boys add me as their friend so I can occasionally peek in on them.
We’re trying to do what we can to make sure the kids are safe in cyberland, but it’s hard to keep up with the crazies. So I have to rely on my kids and the internet to keep me informed. A site I really like is wiredsafety.org. There you can find a lot of great tips about internet safety as well as how to deal with cyberbullies and predators. If your teens or tweens are online you might want to check out wiredsafety.org. It’s a great resource for parents and kids.
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