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internet safety
Wednesday, 16 July 2003 04:35 pmI've watched the news quite a bit over the last few days, and have been following the story of Shevaun Pennington's disappearance and now reappearance. There are a lot of short pieces about internet safety for children and meeting people in chatrooms and things.
It strikes me as quite a dfficult task to ensure the safety of your child. Many teenagers *want* to explore areas of the web their parents might disapprove of - messageboards and chat areas touching on dating and sexual topics (there are plenty of those aimed at teenagers, in a perfectly above-board problem-page kind of way), for example. So you can't assume your child is going to stay in safe waters.
The one thing these TV pieces never seem to say is *learn how to use your software*. Learn what message programs, chat programs, or online java-type chat systems your child is using. Set up passwords so they can't install new software, if you can. Learn how these programs block contacts, or log messages. If the parent understands how the system works they can help the child use it to their advantage.
The only other thing you can do is convince your child that if someone makes approaches to them they find alarming or strange, they can come to you to talk about it, or use a blocking feature on the program. If they talk to someone regularly and they want to meet up face-to-face, you will be very happy to come with them.
It all suffers from the teenage independence thing - 'I know what I'm doing, I can manage for myself, I understand this stuff much better than mum and dad, I can do it myself.' It's very difficult to get over that and have the chid willing to come to the parents for advice or help.
It strikes me as quite a dfficult task to ensure the safety of your child. Many teenagers *want* to explore areas of the web their parents might disapprove of - messageboards and chat areas touching on dating and sexual topics (there are plenty of those aimed at teenagers, in a perfectly above-board problem-page kind of way), for example. So you can't assume your child is going to stay in safe waters.
The one thing these TV pieces never seem to say is *learn how to use your software*. Learn what message programs, chat programs, or online java-type chat systems your child is using. Set up passwords so they can't install new software, if you can. Learn how these programs block contacts, or log messages. If the parent understands how the system works they can help the child use it to their advantage.
The only other thing you can do is convince your child that if someone makes approaches to them they find alarming or strange, they can come to you to talk about it, or use a blocking feature on the program. If they talk to someone regularly and they want to meet up face-to-face, you will be very happy to come with them.
It all suffers from the teenage independence thing - 'I know what I'm doing, I can manage for myself, I understand this stuff much better than mum and dad, I can do it myself.' It's very difficult to get over that and have the chid willing to come to the parents for advice or help.
