What Parents Don’t Know About Their Kids on the Internet

What Parents Don’t Know About Their Kids on the Internet. In days gone by, a parent would give their wee Johnny or Jackie instructions of how to keep safe while playing. These would consist of playing nicely, not to play on the road, be nice to other kids and don’t be late. These days it’s a totally different ball game. Our kids have swapped the fun of running around the neighbourhood, to running around cyberspace. With it, come more dangers than you could imagine, by playing in the neighbours backyard.

The internet is a fantastic reference tool. It is also uncensored and uninhibited. In addition, if it is also unmonitored and unmanaged, it can be a hive for everything you wanted to protect your young ones from. As parents, we now have the responsibility of protecting our kids online. After all, they are exposed to cyber stalkers, sexual predators, impersonators and bullies.

The internet has become a necessity for most of us. Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/15/finland.internet.rights/index.html ) Ask your child what they would rather do without from a cellphone, tv or internet and see what their answer is. More than likely the answer will be the internet. For children, the internet is all about communication.

For adults, it is the CONTENT that becomes a problem. Children often do not understand issues surrounding privacy, and in many cases do not use privacy settings within social networking sites. In two surveys reported this year by Pew Internet Research — of 700 and 935 teens, respectively — 38 percent of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile of some sort. Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day. In a lot of cases, 2 out of 3 parents are unaware their kids have a social networking site. Social networking sites require a user to be a minimum age of 13, but often this is flaunted by younger users who will provide a false age.

There is no way to verify the true age of the user. Children are not equipped to understand the importance of privacy. As a result, they often post images of themselves up on the internet. Once a photo appears on the internet, it no longer belongs to you. Anyone can copy a photo and do as they please with it. In the past, we had 17 and 18 year olds dressing in sexy clothes and heading off to the local dance. Today we have 12 and thirteen year olds dressing in sexy garb, photographing themselves with their latest camera phone, and posting the images to their social networking profile.

There is a growing trend for young girls to post sexual images of themselves to give the impression of a more edgy character. Many teenagers have unlimited access to the internet and their parents have no idea what their children are doing. Many children are receiving unrealistic sex education through hard-core websites. Recent studies show that the average age of first exposure to pornographic material is 11 years of age.

This is usually when the child is doing their homework, and accidentally stumbles on it. 90% of 8 – 16 year olds of viewed pornographic images at least once, while doing their homework. Parents need to understand that installing Parental Control software is a minimum. We are prepared to pay for baby sitters to look after our kids when we go out in the evening, yet are prepared to leave the kids at home in the school holidays to use the internet unmonitored? I recommend installing the K9 software product from Bluecoat Technologies. You will find it at www.getk9.com