Parents Talking With Children Helps Keep Them Safe On Line

Each Octo­ber, the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity encour­ages com­mu­ni­ties to spot­light Inter­net Safety and to edu­cate peo­ple on the dan­gers of the World Wide Web such as cyber bul­ly­ing, iden­tity theft, and inter­net preda­tors. Par­ents are encour­aged to talk to their chil­dren on a reg­u­lar basis to keep their chil­dren safe on line.

Cyber bul­ly­ing has made media head­lines the past sev­eral years with heart­break­ing sto­ries of teens tak­ing their own lives because of relent­less bul­ly­ing over the inter­net. Par­ents need to watch for signs their child may be receiv­ing bul­ly­ing mes­sages from oth­ers. If your child is being bul­lied he or she may appear to be depressed or sad, have trou­ble sleep­ing, los­ing inter­est in school, and spend­ing less time on the com­puter. If you do learn your child has been cyber bul­lied, take steps to stop the bul­ly­ing. Tell your child not to reply to any bul­ly­ing mes­sages, save and print all mes­sages received from the per­son who bul­lies, and con­tact your inter­net provider for assis­tance in get­ting the bul­ly­ing per­son blocked from send­ing mes­sages to your computer.

Iden­tity theft is steal­ing someone’s per­sonal infor­ma­tion and using it to com­mit fraud and other crimes and is the fastest grow­ing crime in the U.S. Teens use the inter­net for on-line gam­ing and shop­ping and need to be aware of the dan­gers of giv­ing out too much infor­ma­tion. Encour­age your teen to ask for your help in mak­ing pur­chases over the inter­net and not to respond to any e-mail mes­sages request­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion such as date of birth and social secu­rity numbers.

Inter­net preda­tors use chat rooms and social net­work­ing sites to locate and con­tact chil­dren for the pur­poses of meet­ing them in per­son for sex. Par­ents need to talk to their chil­dren and be hon­est about preda­tors and their inten­tions. Chil­dren want to be trust­ing and they need to know that preda­tors will pre­tend to me some­one dif­fer­ent from who they say they are. Tell your chil­dren they are never to meet any­body in per­son they have met while chat­ting on line.

If your child does encounter a prob­lem on line, never blame your child or take away their inter­net priv­i­leges. Work with your chil­dren to help avoid any future prob­lems and remem­ber your response will deter­mine if they will con­fide in you the next time there is a prob­lem. Set rea­son­able expec­ta­tions for inter­net use and try to be under­stand­ing of your children’s needs and curiosi­ties. Keep open com­mu­ni­ca­tions with your chil­dren and encour­age them to come to you with any prob­lems they encounter on line and help keep our kids safe.

Keep­ing Our Kids Safe is brought to you by the Delaware Police Depart­ment and School Resource Offi­cer Rod Glazer.

Posted by Rod Glazer on Oct 14 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.