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dr. j's parents' page parenting & protecting internet-interested kids some issues, some answers, some ideas [- this is not dr. j -] dangers & strangers & safety tips chats and contacts - personable people vs. predators 8 Rules for Parents Who Want Their Kids to Have Internet exposure to intense sexual material sex, lies & lurking lechers not a babysitter email EMAIL email 5 basic efforts to keep kids safe links cyber-kids safety issues links general parenting links more article: "A hard look at how we treat children" by Andrew Vachss efforts to protect kids from exposure to intense sexual material Links to reviews & ideas about computer software for kids etc. email dr.j head-cleaners home page 09/01: "I'm dating a new boy," a very church-involved, naive 14 year old tells me with a dreamy look in her eyes. "He's so cool..." I ask where they've gone on their dates so far. "The internet," she says. "We date in chat rooms." I ask what she knows about him. She tells me he's 16 and really neat and he really cares about her. She knows this because he wants to meet her and he worries about her. He lives two states away but they're trying to work something out. "You know," I begin, "you're only 14." "I'm 15 in 39 days!" she counters. "But you really don't know anything about this boy and you're planning to meet him?" "Oh yes, I do -- I know everything about him. I know he really cares. He told me. And I know I can trust him because he tells me I should be careful about talking to people on the internet. He told me there's a lot of creeps on the internet. Why would he do that if he didn't care about me?" I ask her if she doesn't think that would be a clever thing to say if he was some creep looking to kidnap or hurt a 15 year old girl. She says she never thought of that, pauses a moment, and assures me she really is sure he's not a creep. I try to explain how she might not really know who he is but she assures me she does. "He's not a creep!" she insists, "Trust me, I know." She knows because he sent her his picture. When I ask how she knows it's his picture, she tells me she knows because he told her so. "And he's soooo dreamy." (When she says this, her eyes almost roll back in her head and she has a little dreamy smile. Her hormones are obviously in full gear and her brain is obviously turned down to its lowest setting.) With his dreamy alure lubricating her thinking, I cannot get my concern into her head -- hard as I push to get it in, it keeps sliding out. Finally, as she recognizes I've been listening to her sufficiently that I'm giving up trying to burst her bubble. To comfort my frustration and concern she tells me I really don't need to worry -- she assures me that if God doesn't want her hurt, she won't be, and if He does, then it's His will. This did not comfort me. As a psychologist, I can see she feels that she is right and others with other sentiments about her new boyfriend are simply wrong. Having seen my reaction, she may assume that other adults will say the same things and she will probably not be so candid about her activities, her plans and her beliefs after speaking with me. If later she finds herself suddenly looking at pornography he sends her or if she goes to meet him and is raped or otherwise brutalized, she is not likely to tell anyone because she will believe she was stupid and that God punished her and that her parents will punish her further if they know. She will assume if she tells anyone, it will become known to everyone and she will be shunned or at least laughed at everywhere. If she is hurt significantly, she may decide suicide is better than saying anything about what happened. I went with her to her mother and told her mother what she had said. I advised her to assume that her daughter's mind should be considered hormone-hampered for the foreseeable future and that she should take extreme care to monitor any internet activity her daughter engages in. I advised her to assume that her daughter would not be so candid in the future now that she has found that (in her opinion) adults can go so crazy over-board about things. ************************************************** dangers & strangers & safety tips ( this is not meant to be an all-inclusive list ) ************************************************** [Please understand that I love the internet and all its opportunities and I encourage parents to help their kids become as computer and internet savvy as possible. I think this is important for kids' futures. However, I believe it is folly to risk exposing children to the dangers without a safety net of close supervision. This is a mental health and physical safety issue.] chat rooms -- personable people vs. predators How can you tell if you can trust someone?   You can't.   How many teens really understand this?   Very, very few. An unfortunate fact of life is that "nice," "trustworthy," "interested," "caring," "cool" and anything else can be faked by anyone with a little brain power and observational skills. This is even easier on the internet. NOBODY can reliably tell the difference online between a nice person and a clever predator pretending to be a nice person. Everyone -- especially teens and naive, needy and/or lonely adults -- is vulnerable to being drawn into relationships with predators and other creepy folk. There are lots of wonderful ways for adults and kids to "network" with peers all over the world via the internet. Unfortunately there are also a wide variety of individuals out there that you do NOT want your kids to develop relationships with. Internet chat rooms are tantalizing attractions for a broad range of people, some of whom are pretty twisted. Many spend their spare time on the internet, hoping to meet somebody vulnerable, young, and naive -- somebody they can talk to, exchange ideas with, have a sense of influence over and maybe actually meet in person. Some like the "excitement" and arousal of exposing kids to raw sexual material via discussion or email. Some like the idea of maneuvering another individual of any age into a position where he or she can be kidnapped and ultimately involved in one or more of the ugliest of activities you can imagine. If you believe that you can trust your childto tell you if s/he is exposed to unwanted sexual talk or material -- or to dangerous topics, or to tell you if s/he is approached by some other person and is maybe thinking of actually meeting them somewhere -- then you do not understand the power and the possibility of enticement, the power and the possibility of fear or embarrassment, the potential for confusion, and/or many of the dangers that lurk awaiting victims. If you believe you can trust your child completely to monitor his/her own internet experience, you are mistaken. You are risking the lives and well-being of your child, yourself and the rest of your family. Think of the internet as a high powered, nuclear connection accelerator for information and relationships that can only be safely used by children when closely supervised by a watchful, thoughtful adult. Remember: Children change from one day to the next. Children can be influenced, tricked, manipulated with much greater ease than adults. Children can make mistakes. Trusting your child to be in charge of his or her internetting is putting your child in charge of his or her safety, your safety, the safety of others in the family, the safety of your identity and the safety and stability of your present and future finances and wellbeing. If you would not put your child in charge of taking care of all the finances, banking and billpaying, don't trust your child to be fully responsible on the internet. This is all simply a matter of beginning with the understanding that any internet use is subject to inspection and sharing at any time and any discovery of secret happenings will shut down computer use for six months to a year. -:-:-:- National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Sex, lies and lurking lechers. The internet, email and chat-rooms offer everyone the equal opportunity to lie and be lied to. It's easy to say anything and it's easy to pretend to be someone you're not. It's easy in any area of life to get taken advantage of or hurt, and on the internet it's even easier. In face-to-face interactions there are all manner of visual, auditory and even olfactory (smell) cues that signal lies and deception. Anyone trying to deceive has an easier job of it because he or she only needs to focus on wording written down and usually not even transmitted until he or she is sure it's "just right." In a chat-room, everyone looks the same -- they look like type written words. A thirteen year old boy can pretend to be a multimillionaire computer nerd. A clever, creepy, "dirty-old-man" predator can effectively masquerade as an 8 year old girl, a 14 year old boy, an understanding and caring 19 year old woman, a PTSD survivor, a professional -- ANYTHING. The internet is much of the best and the worst of all the big cities put together -- culture, information, stores, museums, people with similar interests, glitz, stimulating activities, creeps, purse snatchers, dirty old men, porno. If your children spend any serious amount of time in chat rooms, some of the people they chat with will not be who your kids think they are. If you would not allow your child to wander around a big city -- Tokyo, New York, Copenhagen -- by himself or herself, you do not want to allow your child to spend time in chat rooms without supervision. The internet is not a babysitter -- it's a doorway to the entire world. It may seem like your child is sitting there, looking out, peacefully and interested, just inside the door. Adolescents and younger kids cannot be expected to understand their own vulnerability to predators. Children should not be expected to be able to tell parents about all frightening or weird experiences that they might encounter. If they do, great. But you cannot count on them being able to candidly alert you to experiences that leave them feeling guilty, dirty, frightened and/or confused. Parents should expect to need to watch for signs of being troubled by strange experiences and should ask their children about any suspicions. Unless you are certain your children are mature enough to handle their internet experience without spot checks and other supervision (e.g., can you expect them to handle getting on a plane and going to and wandering through New York or Copenhagen by themselves without supervision), you should at LEAST do spot checks and insist on regular reports and discussions of internet experiences. Reserve the right to perform (and should perform) spot checks of kids' chat room behaviors, web page explorations, saved files and email. Try to regularly sit down with their kids and surf with them to keep abreast of their kids' experiences and attitudes and to keep up on with their kids' skills levels. (It's pretty hard to monitor and supervise if your skills level is way behind your child's.) 8 RULES 1. Do not allow internet use without the agreement that you have the right and responsibility to do spot checks while your child is on the computer. 2. Have the computer set up in an area of the house that is easy to walk by and set the computer so passers-by can see the screen. Do not let your child have a computer with internet capabilities in his or her room. 3. Do spot checks of browser history, cookies (usually in c:\Windows\Cookies) and temporary cache files (in internet explorer these are usually in C:/Windows/Temporary Internet Files -- in Netscape these are usually in c:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\username\Cache) 4. Encourage your kids to tell you when something bothers them -- AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A SUPPORTIVE REACTION IF THEY TELL YOU. 5. Tell your kids -- NO REAL NAMES, ADDRESSES, SCHOOL NAME, TOWN, PHONE NUMBERS. 6. Make a rule that your child does not write anything in email that you wouldn't want him or her to say in front of you. Insist on the right to spot check email content. 7. Know your kids' friends' parents and communicate with them. If you're not sure they provide reasonable supervision of internet use, be sure they will restrict internet use by your child. 8. If your child has a website, check it at least once each week. Exposure to intense sexual material can cause kids to develop any of a variety of issues with sexuality, relationships, anger, depression, behavior and self-esteem. The internet threatens to expose children -- either accidentally or with unexpected, overpowering intensity -- to the most intense, most raw and raunchy sexual experiences that can be imagined by the most intensely sexual, raw and raunchy lechers in the world. Insist that kids stay away from adult sites. Keep abreast of kids' attitudes, activities and interests. Consider obtaining software (filtering software) that can lock kids out from adult material. (back to the menu) Email can be a very freely used means of communication that has the potential for individuals to send you or your children files that include viruses or graphic material that you might not want to see, read or hear -- or that you don't want your children seeing or reading or hearing. Even if you have censoring software on your machine, anyone your child may give his or her email address to can send adult material along with email. It is reasonable to ask your children not to write anything in email that they would not say in front of you -- and insist on doing spot checks of email content. If child needs to communicate more privately than that, s/he can always resort to talking on the phone or at school or writing a snail mail letter.(back to the menu) (back to the menu) 5 basic efforts to keep kids safe 1. Legislative. The US Congress continues to struggle with the issue of restricting people from putting sexual material on the internet where children might get to it without harming first amendment rights. The law was challenged and repealed. The repeal was appealed but the law was shot down again. It is likely that more efforts will be made, but for now there is no comprehensive law regulating sexual material. Recently the internet industry promised to try to do something to regulate itself. (Have you ever heard of something like that working?)(back to the menu) 2. Warning pages and web browser alerts. Many adult material sites present an initial page that warns that the material available there is sexual and asks the user to assert that he or she is at least 18 and willing to view adult material. This may just entice some kids but at least this assures that the children who don't want to view adult material can turn back before having it thrust into their visual experience. Web browsers (e.g., Netscape) are also beginning to incorporate software that can provide an alert about potential exposure to adult material. (back to the menu) 3. Screening/censoring "filtering" software. There are several filtering programs that can limit kids' access to adult material. This software is purchased and supervised by the computer owner. This seems to give parents at least a little control of their child's experience (a little, not complete). There are ways around this software for a very computer savvy kid and because the software usually works on the basis of a registry of urls on the computer that needs to be updated regularly, there are always sites that just came online that are not restricted. (back to the menu) 4. Adult status verification services (i.e., AdultCheck). Many adult material sites ask for a password from an adult verification service that certifies that the user is 18 or older. These sites will not allow access without the password. The password is obtained for a small fee and can be used to verify adult status at participating sites. It seems there are at least two of these services. There are some loopholes -- for example, any child can get verified with an email account and access to a credit card that can be used without the owner noticing a $10 charge. But this seems to represent a fairly simple means for the providers of adult materials to be responsible for the access to their materials. (back to the menu) You can help me provide articles and other supports to the visitors to this site. If you can, please support this site. other ways to support this site 5. Parental education that they need to share their children's experience on the net (i.e., this paragraph). There are no measures that will keep your children as safe as having a parent or a parent-figure surfing along side of them or at least frequently leaning over their shoulder -- and chatting it up with regularity about their experiences on the net. Like most of the rest of the delights in the world, you cannot expect legislation -- and you especially cannot expect industry self-regulation to protect your kids. You need to. You need to be there in the side car. You need to make the time and muster the patience to share your kids' interests. (Yeh, it takes time and yeh, you want to be the one moving the mouse. Tough. JUST DO IT!) (back to the menu) links ( no guarantees here, just suggestions ) GetNetWise A rich, full of info site. Info on reporting to law enforcement, available legal documents, safety tips. The Center for Democracy and Technology A site focused on the international and national legal and legislative happenings that relate to the internet. Information on legislation attempting to protect children and the complex reasons they are supported and opposed. Police Notebook Information for parents and kids about internet safety from the U of Oklahoma's Dept. of Public Safety. Good advice, good information though very simplified. Written to be read by children (I'd say age 7 and above). CyberAngels - large internet safety organization. News, law, advice. Filtering software & links - by World Village - Brief reviews of various available kinds of filtering software and links about child safety internet issues. Links to cyber-parenting itches, issues, and ideas. NetSmartz Issues, ideas, etc. for parents dealing with internet interested kids. What are the risks to children on the internet? (School District 4J, Eugene, Oregon) How parents can reduce the risks (School District 4J, Eugene, guide to supervising a child's internet experience Links to reviews & ideas about computer software for kids Tips for buying software for children(Computer Museum Network) Reviews of software for children (Computer Museum Network) back to the menu General parenting and parenting issues links Family Education Network Kidsource: education & health care info for parents ParentsPlace.com National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (back to the menu)

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