Online Safety Resource
We deliver reasons and resources to help keep your family safe online.
…Mom Would Have Rather Caught Him in a Chat Room…
I found this story in the Free Lance–Star titled “Man caught in teen's bedroom”, Mother catches man in bed with her 14-year-old daughter. The man is 36-years-old and the police figured that this was at least the third time the sexual encounter has happened. They met and set up the meetings in an Internet chat room.
Short story but it gets the point across.
…Another Reason to Monitor Their Internet Use…
I was reading this story “Teens use Internet to share drug stories” in the USA Today and when I was done, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. This thought never crossed my mind but it sure is another good reason to monitor your teenager’s computer. In a study released by Nielsen BuzzMetrics, there were many jaw-dropping statistics about teen drug use and the way they chat about it on the Internet.
1 in 10 messages analyzed involved teens seeking advice from their peers on how to take illicit drugs without getting caught. The messages were posted on common online message boards, forums and social networks, such as MySpace.com, ym.com and teenspot.com, among others.
More than 160,000 of the 10.3 million messages posted by teens were about drugs or alcohol.
Almost 80 percent of the drug related messages posted by teens mentioned alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and acid/LSD.
I would say those statistics are a good reason to find out what your teenager is talking about on the Internet.
The study also found that in messages about alcohol, hooking up and having sex when drinking were the top behaviors discussed by teens. While a few teens expressed regret over things they did while drunk, many chalked it up to “fun,” “being wasted” and “having a good time.” While both genders discussed hooking up and sex, more girls than boys talked about it, where gender was identifiable.
Teens mentioned how easily and freely they could chat with peers online about drugs and alcohol – and how falling in with the wrong “virtual crowd” often proved as destructive as a “real life” group.
“It used to be enough for parents to know their teens’ friends,” said Doug Tieman, President and CEO of Caron. “However, the online revolution requires parents to be much more sophisticated in terms of understanding not only how their teens are spending time online, but also what they are talking about.”
The study about how teens use the Internet to chat about drugs and alcohol can be found at the caron.org website.
Keeping the Kids Safe
Those stories are two very good reasons to own a computer monitoring program. If you want to stop a sexual encounter before it happens, there is a good chance that the meeting was set up, or at least talked about, over the Internet. If you want to know if your teenager is drinking, doing drugs, or having sex, a computer monitoring program is a sure way to find out.
Online Safety Tips
- Be Aware of Signs. Signs that your child could be engaging in inappropriate or dangerous behavior online include closing a screen quickly when you walk by, becoming distressed if you remove computer privileges and difficulty waking up for school because of late night online activity.
- Web Surfing is a Privilege. Define the rules, concerns and expectations for online activities with your teen. Set limits on internet usage and alert them that you will regularly ask them to walk you through their recent online activity.
Online Safety Resource recommended Monitoring Program - Webwatcher
- WebWatcher is extremely powerful and easy to use. Begin using immediately, without having to read a manual. The Internet Predators do not stand a chance with Webwatcher on your side.
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