Keeping our children safe on the internet

As a parent, I am concerned about the safety of our children on the internet. The internet is not evil in itself, but there are plenty of evil people who use it to prey on children. Over the next several weeks, the church will be providing information to parents to help them protect their children.

Here's some rules for parents as well the top 10 things to teach your children about the internet...

Parent’s Rules & Tools (Taken from ProtectKids.com)

Rule: Teach your children to never give personal information over the Internet.

• "In a study of 4 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 who use the Internet, 29% indicated they would give out their home address and 14% would give out their email address if asked (NOP Research Group, 2002).

Rule: Disallow Chat Rooms/ Limit your child's Instant Messaging to a parental approved buddy lists.

• Approximately 89% of sexual solicitations of youth were made in either chat rooms or through Instant Messaging (Pew Study reported in JAMA, 2001).

Rule: Keep the computer in a public area of the house.

• 30% of parents allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house such as a bedroom or a home office. Parents say they are more vigilant about where their teen(s) go online if the computer is in a public area of the household (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).
• Nearly one-third of young people (31%) have a computer in their bedroom, and one in five (20%) have an Internet connection there (Kaiser Family Foundation Study, March 2005).

Tool: Use parental controls/filtering technology.

• Over half (51%) of parents either do not have or do not know if they have software on their computer(s) that monitors where their teenager(s) go online and with whom they interact (NCMEC/Cox 5/24/05).
• 70% of teens online have accidentally come across pornography on the Web (The Kaiser Family Foundation).
• The adult Internet porn industry estimates that some traffic on their sites is 20–30% children (NRC Report, 2002).
• 74% of commercial pornography sites display free teaser porn images on the homepage (NRC Report, 2002).

Rule: Know your kids online activities and friends.

• Nearly three out of 10 (28%) of parents don't know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).
• 11-year-old Josh had been looking at graphic violent porn on the Internet for 20 minutes immediately before stabbing 8-year-old Maddie Clifton to death (11/98).
• 42% do not review the content of what their teenager(s) read and/or type in chat rooms or via Instant Messaging (NCMEC/Cox5/24/05).
• Only 25% of children who received a sexual solicitation told a parent (NCMEC, 2000).

Rule: Implement safety rules and software tools to protect your children on-line.

• 77% of parents do not have rules about what their kids can do on the computer, such as restricting the amount of time their kids spend on the computer. (Kaiser Family Foundation Study, March 2005).
• Internet pedophiles are increasingly adopting counter-intelligence techniques to protect themselves from being traced (National Criminal Intelligence Service, 8/21/03).
• Of all the abductions of children ages 15-17, two out of every 5 were the result of the Internet (San Diego Police Department).

Top 10 Things to Teach Your Children
to Keep Them Safe Online

by Donna Rice Hughes (from ProtectKids.com)

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1. Never give out personal information (such as name, age, address, phone number, school, town, password, schedule) or fill out questionnaires or any forms online.
2. Never meet in person with anyone you have met online without Mom and/or Dad's presence.
3. Do not enter chat rooms.
4. Do not tell anyone online where you will be or what you will be doing without Mom and/or Dad's permission.
5. Never respond to or send e-mail to new people you meet online. Talk to your parents first so that they can check it out.
6. Be careful not to go into a new online area that is going to cost additional money without first getting Mom and/or Dad's permission.
7. Never send, without Mom and/or Dad's permission, a picture over the Internet or via regular mail to anyone you've met on the Internet.
8. Don't buy or order products online or give out any credit card information online without Mom and/or Dad's permission.
9. Never respond to any email or chat conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable. End such an experience by logging off and telling Mom and/or Dad as soon as possible.
10. Always tell Mom and/or Dad about something you saw, intentionally or unintentionally, that is upsetting.