Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in Parents who are not computer literate need to become computer literate, or there shouldn’t be a computer in the home to which teenagers have access. Cyberspace is probably more dangerous to a teen than a street corner in a slum neighborhood where known drug dealers do business.
Parents would never allow their teenagers to hang out on a street corner where drugs are bought and sold, and yet those same parents turn a blind eye to their teen’s hours and hours of computer use. Those teens are hanging out. They aren’t really spending several hours each and every day online doing research for school projects. Teens are hanging out at sites on the Internet that make those corners where drugs are sold look like a Sunday School picnic.
Teenagers are mostly as large physically as most adults, but that doesn’t mean that they have the life experience to make good judgments. They may be as big as adults, but they are NOT adults. Teenagers are kids, and they need parental supervision both out in the real brick-and-mortar world and in the virtual one.
Predators inhabit the Internet. Predators LOVE the Internet. There is anonymity. A person can claim to be anybody they would like to be. A 30-year-old rapist can pretend to be a 16-year-old high school boy. A child molester can say he is a 15-year-old girl. Your teen can be lured into a face-to-face meeting with a sexual predator.
Teens aren’t good at hiding their personal information. Teens will inadvertently give out information online that makes it easy for those who wish to identify them and where they live.
The family computer should be in a family area. A teenager should NEVER have a computer in his or her own room. Parents need to learn how to see what kinds of website their teens are visiting and what they are doing while they are there. Parents need to become computer literate!
The bottom line is that if parents REALLY want to keep their kids safe online, they need to know what said kids are doing on the computer, and what is happening in their online lives. Blocks and filters are easy to get around, and talking alone will get you nowhere… (if you think your kids are going to tell you, honestly, everything they are doing online – you are a fool). Education is a great thing, and very necessary, but how can you consider yourself educated if you don’t know the simplest information – like what your kids are really doing. If you have monitoring software, like our PC Pandora, you will know everything they do and will be able to talk to them about it. If you aren’t monitoring and don’t know what they are really doing, how can you be sure they are safe? It’s not an issue of privacy (I have no idea where and when kids were granted endless privacy because they exist – in my day privacy was earned through trust and an established good behavior record), nor is it an issue of trust – it’s called being a 21st century parent. If you don’t know what your kids are doing online, you aren’t doing your job as a parent. If you aren’t monitoring what your kids do online and watch them, someone else will…