Keeping Kids Safe on the Internet
By Sandy Morris on Dec 1, 2009 in Family-N-Friends
- Image by nrtphotos via Flickr
Did you know that every day there are 750,000 pedophiles looking for kids on the internet?
As parents we often worry about our kids playing outside or walking to a friends house but we fail to see the fact that there are some very bad people searching the internet for our kids.
Beginning with your kids first day at school no longer are you the controller of everything they see and experience.
Children learn new ideas and skills at a fast pace. As their capabilities grows, so does their awareness of all the possibilities before them.
They often develop an interest in exploring and mastering these possibilities. Especially after the age of seven, their cognitive abilities allow them to think logically and consider the world around them in more specific and personal ways. The internet can provide a useful tool to enable this learning but it can also be an area with pitfalls.
Children understand the concept of “stranger danger” and other perils. However, they remain innocent and unaware of their vulnerability, and do not fully comprehend the human capacity to do harm. During this age they are often more trusting and less questioning then they perhaps should be.
This puts a huge responsibility on you as a parent to establish and enforce rules that ensure the child’s safety while they are online. He has not yet internalized these rules; he simply follows them because that is what is expected of him. Don’t expect your child to be able to generalize real life safety rules to his online experience.
Even if you have explained some of the harm that can befall him, he may not yet see the relationship between some of his actions and possible consequences. You cannot expect them to understand fully that someone would intentionally want to hurt them. But an ounce of prevention can go a long way.
I am sure you have heard the story of the “man” at the playground who asks a young child to help him find his puppy as he guides the young child away. The same can be true on the internet and it can happen in a few short conversations with “new friends”.
Are you doing enough to protect your kids? Everyone needs to be aware of the people who prey on our kids. No matter whether you have young kids of your own or not… remember, people helping people and keeping kids safe on the internet!
Read some other interesting articles:
- Internet Child Safety Advocate Denise Pellow Selected as Cyber Safety Examiner for Examiner.com (prweb.com)
- Facebook’s Loosening of Privacy Controls Spark a Backlash (wired.com)
- PC Pandora Heads “Back to School” with Internet Safety and PD Pandora (prweb.com)
- Common Sense Social Networking (svmoms.com)
- President Obama Warns Kids about Posting on Facebook; PC Pandora Warns Parents about the Dangers of Not Monitoring Their Children’s Internet Activity (prweb.com)
- FTC Seeks Out Explicit Content in Kids Virtual Worlds (thismommygig.org)
