On May 27, 2004, the Safe Community Coalition sponsorsed a talk by Iris Beckwith, Director of Abuse Prevention Programs for Children for Childhelp USA-Virginia. Childhelp is a national non-profit working in the field of child abuse treatment, education and prevention. Mrs. Beckwith have been teaching the acclaimed Good Touch/Bad Touch program for over ten years, has taught parenting classes, and has been extensively involved in programs dealing with Internet Safety for children and adults.

Ms. Beckwith's talk covered three major areas: 1) what all children do on line, 2) how predators can access them, and 3) what parents can do to control access. She said that it is not bad for children to use email and instant messaging; they just need to be used correctly. If parents forbid access, children will find a way to do it anyway. The key is good parenting and good communication. A particularly useful website is www.safetyclicks.com

What Children Do On-line
Children need the internet for school projects. They like to use the internet because they are not sure who they are and the internet levels the playing field. Almost all children have email accounts and screen names their parents don’t know about.

Teachers want students to:

• Use multiple sources of information

• Not to rely on the first few websites the search brings up

• Not simply to cut and paste information into a document

• Give credit to resources

• Make sure they understand the information

• Understand that just because it is online doesn’t make it true

The internet makes plagiarism easy. Students will share papers with next year’s students so that the same paper gets recycled. Consequences of plagiarism can be failing that assignment, or failing the class. Plagiarism may also ruin the student’s reputation and end up in a college application file.

Students are downloading music, movies and games that are protected by copyright laws. They don’t understand the consequences of dowloading and file sharing copyrighted material. They think it is OK because other children are doing it. Children can be, and are being, fined for this illegal behavior. There are many new websites where these things can be downloaded legally by paying for the content. Companies that provide music free get their revenue from getting into clients’ computers and selling their electronic addresses. Once their worms are in your computer, it is very difficult to get them out. Ms. Beckwith related a story that the administration at Penn State University was so concerned that students were using their university email accounts to download music, and thus making the university a party to their illegal activity, that they now give all students free Napster accounts and inform students that any illegal downloading will cause the student to lose university email account privileges.

Another student activity online is electronic bullying. Children use email, instant messaging, chatrooms, cell phones and mobile devices to stalk, intimidate, and threaten other children. These devices are used to spread rumors, lies, jokes, or stories about classmates and other children. Children may not realize that the person they are writing about may inadvertently see the message. Middle School administrators, parents, and teachers report that this is the biggest computer issue they are dealing with. Electronic bullying leads to multiple problems for the child victim and for the school.

Children can also buy alcohol and cigarettes online. Many children have their own credit card accounts that parents give them to learn financial responsibility; a downside is that they may be buying items parents would not want them to buy and which are, in this case, illegal. They may have the items shipped to the home of a friend to avoid your detection.

How Predators Gain Access to Your Children
Children believe they are safe if they don’t give out their name, address, or phone number. Sometimes children think they are safe if they lie about their name and use a friend’s name instead; the predator then gets access to information about the friend that can be misused. Studies show that one in every five children is sexually solicited on line. Last year 785 children went missing after meeting a person on line. Internet allows open discussion of sexual desires and shared ideas about ways to lure victims. Game rooms have a chat component. Children go back to the same game until they beat it; meanwhile, they become familiar with the names of others in the chat component. Predators will use this familiarity to send an instant message to the child and begin direct contact. Many teens keep journals, personal profiles, and web sites online. Very often these sites contain enough personal information for predators to identify the child. They contact the child and ask the child to call them on their 800 number. The originating phone number shows up on their caller ID; with the phone number, they can easily get the address and location of the child’s home.

What Parents Can Do to Control Access and Protect their Children
Parents need to talk to their children and set limits. For example, children under the age of 10 should not be allowed to use instant messaging. After that, they should be allowed to establish buddy lists of five friends, with the number expanding as they get older. Children should know everyone on their buddy list; they should not include "friends of friends." You should know their screen names and have access to their buddy lists. It is OK for you to check their buddy list frequently. As the child gets older, you might not check their sites unless you suspect that your child is in trouble. However, if you don’t have access information and your child becomes missing, you will need a search warrant to get into your own computer to access their files.

Remind your children not to talk to strangers, and that includes people they met in chat rooms or through instant messaging. Remind them they should never meet an online contact in person without the knowledge and permission of a trusted adult. Also make sure your children know to tell you if they believe they are approached online in an uncomfortable or frightening manner, and that they will not get in trouble for doing so.
During group sleepovers or parties, don’t let your children use instant messaging. In that setting, messages are more likely to be hurtful of others, or cause passwords and account information to be shared with their friends. Friends can then use this information to get into your family computer, gain access to credit card account numbers and much other private information.

Sit at the computer with your middle or high school student and watch the campaign on the www.NCMEC.org website together. It will alert your child to the dangers of strangers in chat rooms.
Talk to your children about cyber-ethics. Explain to them that downloading illegal music is equivalent to stealing a CD in a record store.

When sending emails, instruct them not to forward emails with the addresses of their friends available to everyone on the addressee list. Either send the email as a blind carbon copy so everyone’s email doesn’t show, or cut and paste the message and send it directly to the intended recipient.

An adult in your household should be the system administrator for your computer. Then you can install software that allows you to track all IM messages. So long as your children do not know your password, they will have difficulty disabling the controls you establish. If you don’t believe you know enough about your computer to set the controls, you can hire companies like www.computergeeks.com that will come into your home, and for $50-$60 per hour, set up firewalls and the controls you want. Once the controls are set, you can get daily, weekly, or monthly reports of what sites your child accessed or tried to access, who is on their buddy list and who has been removed from it. If a site is locked to your child, but the child then has a need to access that site, you can either log on with your own password and let them see it, or you can unlock a particular site for a particular period of time.

It is important that you and your child together complete the privacy screens provided by AOL, Yahoo, Earthlink, and others. Some of these companies have limits once you list the child’s screen name and age. For example, limits can include the time of day or number of hours the child can access the chat room.
Don’t allow your child to provide specific information in their "away message." The message should state only that they are off-line at that time.

Don’t allow your child to use teen journals, personal profiles, or personal web pages since they can provide too much personal information.
It is important that you set limits for your children, and that you use the electronic controls that are available to you. While children will complain bitterly, they want you to be a parent and set safe boundaries for them.