by Sally Treadwell

A few years ago, my daughter casually mentioned her MySpace account. I didn’t even know she had one. Immediately, my mind flew to the worst-case scenario—online predators. I squawked. You know, that mom-squawk.

She rolled her eyes. “Mo-o-o-m…ya think I’m a dummy? It’s set to private.”

Private? You could set your online presence to private?

I’m more fly than that now, of course, and I’m a lot more aware of my kids’ online life. E-mail is so yesterday; desktops have given way to laptops, then to SmartPhones. FaceBook now trumps MySpace and sexting has a place in the dictionary—the regular one, not just the notorious Urban Dictionary. But however much I know, I feel I’ll always be a beat or two behind.

“If kids are smart, they’re not going to get into trouble unless they’re looking for trouble,” my daughter opined. “But some parents are so over-protective; they don’t teach them and they don’t let them learn, either—uh, MOM.”

So what does a smart, responsible parent do to ensure that kids are smart and responsible?

The upside of online
First, recognize the value of the Web. There are some parents who think that the best way to protect their children from the online underworld is to keep them out of cyberspace altogether. And unless your child is very young, that’s probably neither possible nor desirable.

Take those social networking sites, like FaceBook. BW (Before Web) a kid would go to summer camp, meet some kid he clicked with, maybe write a letter or two, and wake up 40 years later saying wistfully, “I wonder what happened to—?” Now kids keep up with friends and acquaintances all over the world and chat regularly with uncles and aunts they used to only see only at Christmas. They network to find summer jobs, they figure out homework assignments, they have an outlet for creativity and self-expression. Shy kids get comfortable with a social world and once-ostracized nerds find entire communities who share their interests.

The internet has irrevocably changed education, too. BW, kids needed to memorize long lists of facts. Now that those facts are available at a glide of the mouse, education is far more focused on making innovative, inter-disciplinary connections. And a kid can not only get tutoring or play chess with a master online, she can also ask and answer mind-stretching questions in ways we never dreamed of. Instead of taking it as gospel that, for instance, women in Saudi Arabia hate the way they live, she can actually read the Saudi newspaper and ask a few local women for herself. Face to face, via webcam.

So where do you fit in?
First, says Gregg Hunter of the Georgia Family Council, you must know what your kids are doing online—by doing it yourself. If you use your computer only to check out sales on eBay or forward jokes, you’ll have no clue what’s possible.

If you give them permission to join social networking sites, you should join, too, so that you know exactly how they work and can “friend” your child. If your child doesn’t want to “friend” you, that could be a sign that you should get more involved, says Hunter. He also suggests that you “friend” your kids’ buddies, or at least look through their profiles in the same way that you might check them out in person. And as theantidrug.com notes, “if your teen’s friends have pictures of themselves at parties and everyone has a beer in their hand, chances are your teen has been to similar events.”

Some parents take a different approach, allowing their kids more privacy but still being watchful. Our family’s deal is that we can—and do—check our kids’ networking pages at any time. If we don’t like what we see, the plug gets pulled. Our kids argue, however, that we have the right to see their pages, but not to invade their friends’ personal pages. They have a point—in offline life we might know where their friends live, but we don’t get to rummage through their closets. And I kind of agree when they say it’s “creepy” when friends’ parents ask to “friend” them. Remember how we hated having parents trying to listen to our conversations all the time or trying to be one of the gang?

What’s right for your family? Where’s the balance between allowing a child privacy and room to grow, and monitoring potential problems? There’s no one answer, except that you have to have that family conversation. And you should probably extend it to your children’s friends’ families, too.

Oh, and about that conversation.
Make it a good one. You can have all the safety blocks and firewalls in the world, Hunter knows, but nothing, absolutely nothing, is as effective as that parent-child relationship.

“Software doesn’t impart values,” he says. “Many years ago, a non-profit group found that parents were the number one drug-prevention weapon—incidence [of drug use] dropped dramatically when parents just started talking about avoiding drugs with their kids. You have to tell your kids what you feel, how much you care about them, and how much you care about their future. Cover everything—sex, drugs, pornography, smoking, alcohol, cursing, relationships, all of it.”

And bear in mind that your children are no longer restricted to the technology that’s in your home or your school library. If that kid on the bus has an iPhone (and an amazing number do) your kid has access to anything he wants. So they have to be prepared and willing to make the right decisions.

Create an agreement.
Download a sample internet behavior agreement (try georgiafamily.org/playitsafe_t.aspx) and customize it to fit your family, covering their behavior on any and all devices, including those belonging to other people. Specify the amount of time they can spend online, the type of sites they can visit, the kind of behavior you expect from them, your intention to inspect any device and any file at any time you wish, the chat rooms they may (or may not) visit, unacceptable content or language, and their responsibility to tell you immediately about any cyber-bullying, hateful language, or anything disturbing that they encounter. Oh, and spell out the penalties for breaking your trust.

Then you all need to discuss it—listen to your kids and consider any comment they make objectively—and sign it. Now it’s all on the table, no loopholes.

Add a filter
There are any number of filters available for computers and cell phones, offering everything from total blocks to real fine-tuning. Remember that things change as your child gets older; my teen, for instance, found herself blocked out of an informative blog about the Gardasil vaccine because it mentioned teen sex—which made researching her paper tricky. The Georgia Family Center recommends the customizable, web-based Safe Eyes. It covers up to three computers and ten user profiles, tracking activity, blocking the content you choose, and controlling time spent. It can even send you email alerts.

Manners
Teach your children never to say anything online that they wouldn’t say if they were within reach of a fist. Period. Also, clue them in on occasional problems with misinterpretation of what someone is saying when facial cues are missing.

The bad stuff

ID theft and pedophiles
Not all internet predators are looking for sexual victims. Many want your child’s name, birthday, address, and other pertinent info so that they can go shopping on your dime via a stolen identity. And phishing scams abound.

Teach kids to be cautious, not to reveal personal information anywhere online (don’t even name that soccer practice pitch), never to link to sites through an email—always use the main portal to, say, a VisaBuxx account. And it should go without saying that their social networking sites should always be set to private and that anyone requesting to be their “friend” should be scrutinized, preferably by you. Is this friend-of-a-friend REALLY who he says he is?

“Kids are so open,” says Hunter. “They think, well, it’s all anonymous, it won’t hurt to accept this person’s request.”

Google yourself and your child frequently; set up regular alerts for full names and nick names.

Pornography
Think pornography would never be a problem for your child? Welcome to the world of site-napping and mouse-trapping.” You may remember that a few years ago, kids trying to get to the White House website were…surprised. That’s still going on. Hard-core porn sites take advantage of common misspellings of innocent site names to hook a surprising number of children in. And if your child tries to hit the x button to close the site, x turns out to mean ‘next image.’ By the time they’ve figured out how to close the site down—if they ever do—they’ve been exposed to a lot.

“Kids can be very intrigued,” says Hunter. “Those images stay in their minds; they’re curious about bodies and sexuality. Our biggest concern is for their future, that they’ll take wrong ideas about loving relationships into marriage. A University of Pittsburgh study showed that addiction to pornography rivals addiction to heroin or cocaine in intensity.”

Your only weapons: a very good filter and honest, age-appropriate conversations about pornography and the harm it can do. Plus a practical lesson in how to ALWAYS completely exit the window, not just to hit what seems to be the close button, and make full disclosure to Mom or Dad.

Beware the forwarded e-mail
Oh, come ON. Stop forwarding those e-mails so that a million people end up with all your friends’ and family’s email addresses, ripe with the potential for sending phishing emails and ads for unsavory products. There’s a BCC (blind carbon copy) field for a reason, and if your email account doesn’t have it, switch to one that does. Train your child to wipe out any previous email addresses before forwarding, to ALWAYS use the BCC field, and to good-grief his friends about it too.

Sexting
Most of us are aware of the concept, but how many of us were aware that sexting is now so prevalent that it has a name? Depending on which study you believe, anywhere from 20 to 38 percent of teens claim they have sent a nude or semi-nude picture or an explicit message via cell phone. Here’s what you need to tell your kids:
• In many states you can be arrested on child pornography charges if you send or receive a nude picture of an underage child—even if the picture is of yourself and you sent it to your boyfriend.
• Sooner or later, you’re going to regret it.
• Mom and/or Dad WILL be doing surprise checks on their phone pictures and texts.

Hunter suggests asking them if they’re aware that if they send a picture to a boy or girlfriend and that person gets mad at them (or wants to show off) they can forward it to 1,000s of people, who can forward it to millions more. Future college recruiters, bosses, and mothers-in-law and that mean girl down the street will all have access. One girl committed suicide, unable to shake off the humiliation when it happened to her, and one boy is now on a registered sex offender list, has been kicked out of college, can’t find a job, and has lost many friends—all because he impulsively forwarded his girlfriend’s picture after a row.

Cyber-bullying
Sometimes cyber-bullying takes the form of kids using a cell phone camera to take pictures of another kid in a locker room and then posting them online and mocking them. And we all remember the case of the mother who posed as a boy flirting with and then humiliating her daughter’s enemy, a child who subsequently committed suicide.

Most cyber-bullying is less extreme, thankfully—often it’s mean-girl stuff cooked up at slumber parties—but it cannot be tolerated. Depending on the severity, you might wish to help your child block a bully from his phone and computer and explain to them that some kids are just immature; tell the other child’s parents; talk to a school administrator; or discuss it with the police. And make it very clear that you will not tolerate your own child cyber-bullying to any degree.

Connectsafely.org suggests that victims: “don’t respond, don’t retaliate; talk to a trusted adult; and save the evidence. We also advise young people to be civil toward others and not to be bullies themselves. Finally, ‘be a friend, not a bystander.’ Don’t forward mean messages and let bullies know that their actions are not cool.”

Check apps
Applications (apps) that can be downloaded onto an iTouch or SmartPhone give access to anything from stress-busting bubble-wrap popping to a heart monitor. But page through them occasionally. There’s also Cannabis (to help find, ahem, medical marijuana).

Support groups
Support groups sound great, but occasionally they take a turn for the ugly. There are support groups for anorexics, sharing freakish pictures and tips for evading parental concern; there are support groups for kids trying to find the best high. If you are concerned that this might be a problem, use site-tracking technology.

Are you scared yet?
You shouldn’t be. The vast majority of children use the internet with no negative consequences and many positive ones. But forewarned is forearmed, and informed, frequent discussions with your child are key. As technology changes rapidly and becomes ever more mobile, we parents have to keep up. And figure out a way to get them into the fresh air occasionally…

Resources
Netsmartz.org
Connectedsafely.org
Safekids.com
fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm