The Internet is a fabulous resource for students, but unfortunately also a potentially dangerous place due to its inherently open nature. Of Zen and Computing does not want to see such a potentially valuable educational and recreational resource such as the Internet thrown to the side simply because of the threats posed by a few technologically enterprising predators, and so we present The smart parent’s guide to keeping children safe online.
Education is the key
First and foremost, above all else, children need to be educated about the pros and cons of the Internet. Children are taught not to talk to strangers on the street, and they shouldn’t talk to strangers on the Internet either. We believe that the absolute best defense against online predators is a well educated child. You do not have to stand over your child’s shoulder or spy on their activity when you can trust their ability to recognize a potentially dangerous situation, and be skeptical of requests for personal information and real life meetings.
The following bullets outline some important points about online socialization that both parents and children should know about.
- Know exactly what personal information you’re putting online
Personally identifying information doesn’t belong online. Once you publish something online, it’s there for good. A good rule of thumb is don’t publish anything online that you wouldn’t want on the front page of the newspaper. Even if you delete your profile or web page, you can never be sure that it’s gone for good.
- Any page on the Web can be saved by anyone to their own computer and kept forever.
- There are organizations whose purpose is to archive the Internet. These organizations employ software that regularly crawls around the Internet, saving all of these changes that it finds. One such service is The Wayback Machine, which stores each different version of each website it has saved over the past few years.
- If you don’t personally know someone, you can never be sure who they really are online.
There’s a famous quote from an old New Yorker cartoon that goes “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. Online identities can often be elaborate works of fiction created for personal gain. We’ve seen quite a few TV news specials that featured law enforcement officials successfully gaining access to a young person’s profile under the assumed identity of a new teenager in town seeking friends. The point is that marking your profile “private” means nothing if you liberally add people to your access list just to boost the number of “friends” that you have.
- Keep the details of your routine offline
Going into minute detail about your daily activities is an open invitation for trouble, and unfortunately very common-place among social networking websites. Consider this question: if you wanted to burglarize someone’s home, how would you go about it? We would probably observe you for a period of time and learn your routine, and then be able to break in when you’re away.
Now consider this question: if someone wanted to find you, how would they go about it? They’d probably try to discern your routine, and then use that knowledge to predict where you’ll be at a specific point in time. If your child’s blogging about their route home from school, or the hours of their part-time job, they’re delivering an early birthday present to would-be predators, gift wrapped and all.
What are kids doing online, anyway?
Step one of finding out what your kids are doing online is simple: ask them. Open a positive dialogue with your children about their online activities. Be inquisitive without being invasive. If you don’t come down with a heavy hand, you may be surprised at how they respond.
The Internet is a popular socialization tool among kids (as well as adults) because it allows them connect with their peers more frequently, in ways that were never before possible. Whether that’s good or bad is subjective, and beyond the scope of this article. So, what the heck is there to do online, anyway?
- Social networking websites
Social networking websites are virtual clubs. Examples are MySpace and Facebook. They’re a place to hang out, chat, and meet people. Many typical social networking websites will allow someone to:
- Create and personalize a profile.
- Post their picture(s).
- Maintain a list of contacts, which links back to each of those people’s profiles.
- Engage in conversation via private messages and public message boards.
- Multimedia trading
Computers and ‘net connections are very fast these days, so more and more people are spending their time uploading and downloading both audio and video. Sites like YouTube let anyone post a video or audio file for others to see and discuss.
- Instant Messaging
Instant messages are usually one-to-one conversations through a service like AIM (AOL) or Yahoo! Messenger. We say usually, because as instant messaging evolves, many IM clients also support multi-user chat rooms.
- Chatting
Chat rooms — the classic example of online socialization. Chat rooms enable any number of people to congregate and talk to each other. Chatting is possible through a service like Internet Relay Chat, although there are countless other places to chat online. Chat rooms are not as popular as they used to be with young people, likely because they’re about raw communication, while social networking sites like MySpace have extra features like friend lists and message boards, whose statistics act as digital status symbols.
This isn’t a complete list, but it gives you a good idea of what’s happening. Basically, social hubs on the Internet are about communication. They take a core ingredient such profiles or videos, and then create a conversation and a set of relationships around them. It’s in participating in those conversations and browsing those relationships that kids devote their time.
Common sense as security
A smart parent who understands (or, at least tries to understand) their children can educate them on the real world implications of participating in the social aspects of the Internet. A child doesn’t have to be deprived of their digital connections when they understand the consequences of being careless, and why not being so is in their best interest. Your first and best line of defense in keeping your children safe online is educating them to make the right decisions.
[tags]Parenting, Social Networking, Internet, Web 2.0[/tags]
