subject: Ultimate Ways To Stay Safe Online [print this page] Unfortunately, every single day there are children and teens who are approached on the Internet by predators of all ages, all genders with all kinds of terrible intentions, so it is important that children know how to stay safe online. Too many kids do not take these things seriously enough, and sadly too many parents are still naive about what their children are doing online and what could potentially happen to them if they give the wrong information to the wrong people, intentionally or not. Parents can do a lot of things to make sure that their children have the best chance of staying safe not only online but also in the real world.
First of all, parents need to make sure that on social networking websites like myspace or facebook that all of their personal information is kept private, especially their full names, phone numbers, what school they go to and their address. Children should only add people that they know in real life to their friends lists, no matter how tempting it might be to add that cute boy who is offering a friend request (children need to understand that the cute boy could very well be a 42 year old convicted sex offender who is looking for his next victim). Instruct teens and children that to stay safe online they need to not have their profiles public; they need to always set them and their blogs that they write about themselves to private.
Instead of kids listing their full, legal real names, they instead need to choose to use a nickname that does not identify their gender, their age or their location. Parents need to help kids alter pictures and videos so that any identifying information is deleted. For example, if a child is standing in front of the school they go to in a photo, the school needs to be cropped from the photo so that a predator can not go to that school looking for the child (yes, they do this).
Also, to stay safe online, children must understand the importance of sharing their photos and profile only with the people who are on their friends list (again, they should only be friends with real people that they know in person). One of the most important things that people can teach their kids to do is to never, ever, EVER post their plans on their page or post their whereabouts on the site! Although it may be sometimes difficult, children need to do their best to ignore rude or harassing comments that are posted on their profile; in fact, they can set their security settings so that only friends are allowed to post comments. Most of all, in order to stay safe online, teens should NEVER post sexually provocative photos of themselves or anyone else online!
by: Phoenix Delray
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