SHEDDING SOME LIGHT ON THE INTERNET…

February 1, 2004
Reprinted from Renfrew Collingwood News,
February/March 2004

80% Canadian youths have access to the Internet at home; about half of them are using it with very little or no adult supervision, guidance, or rules.

25% of young Internet users have been asked by someone they met on the Internet only once to meet face-to-face; about 15% of these users met their online counterparts in person; and of these, 2 in 10 went to these meetings alone and without adult supervision.

Over the past several weeks, I have received a lot of e-mail inquiries and concerns from parents, grandparents, and guardians of young children regarding how to properly keep their child’s young minds from traversing on the “dark side” of the web. After all, you can only do so much supervising and peering over shoulders. What is a concerned teacher, parent, guardian, grandparent, or babysitter suppose to do? Is there anything out there on the web that is safe for children?The Basics – the fundamentals that all concerned parents should do.
  1. Teach your children to value and protect their private information when entering chat rooms, instant messaging services, websites, e-mail services etc. Personal information such as: gender, picture, passwords, e-mail address, mail address, and credit card information should always be protected.
  2. Establish family rules on how to use the Internet and what sites are appropriate and which are not.
  3. Chat and educate your kids about predators, and other online pitfalls and dangers.
  4. If your children are using instant messaging services and chat rooms, make sure you know who they are talking to and what they are talking about.
  5. Monitor chat room activities and topics of conversation.
  6. Get some parental filtering software.

E-mailing & Chatting Concerns…

Most young Internet users today, even the little ones have e-mail accounts. Many of them use the commercial free e-mail accounts and chat services such as MSN and Yahoo, which are unmonitored and not screened. There are services available that offer: adult monitored chat rooms, bulletin boards, and e-mail services. Although most of these sites offer some degree of supervised use, private chat room conversations can not be monitored; it is imperative that parents make sure that all chat conversations happen in the public rooms. As well, these services can not guarantee that adults can not join or pretend to be children.

Finding “good” and “safe” information on the web…

Looking for the “good” stuff on the web can be difficult when you use a general search engine such as: Google or a directory like: Yahoo. These services typically give you everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are a number of “kid friendly” search engines out there on the web that parents and children can use. All of following search engines filter out offensive and inappropriate materials.
Other good sites to visit with your children…
I often get asked by parents a lot in my classes regarding “safe and informative sites” that they can let their children go into. After rattling my brain and testing them out on a few unwilling little cousins, I have come up with the following:
I hope this goes a long way in helping all those distressed moms, dads, grand parents, guardians, childcare workers, and babysitters. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, complaints, or other great site(s) that you feel I should add to this list, feel free to e-mail me by clicking here or at: gb.technobytes@gmail.com. You can also leave comments by clicking on the comments link at the end of the article.

See you soon,

~Geekboy.

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