There are horrifying stories that we have all heard about regarding what can happen to children online like cyber-bullying and online predators.
Since your children have many ways and places to access the internet you should remember that. Since your children will be accessing computers other than your own house, monitoring what they do won’t be easy. Your children obviously will have friends that have internet access at their homes, and their parents may not be as concerned about protection as you are, so they may be unsupervised. Schools are another place where your children can use a computer, so you should learn about the policies of supervision of children that they have.
While many kids are approached by potential predators online, in most cases nothing comes of it, as long as the child knows enough not to respond. Warning signs are something you need to be alert of just in case someone succeeded in contacting with your child.
It can be a concern if your child is having unusual phone activity. You should investigate anything that your child receives if you have never heard of the sender. If your child is being secretive about being online, on the phone or with any offline activities then you should be on the look out for it.
For both adults and teens alike, Facebook is one of the most popular meeting places on the internet. Your child shouldn’t be on Facebook at all if he or she is pre-teen, and you must realize this. Even though Facebook will not let those under 13 register, a lot of children are able to get around this specific rule. Having your kid lie about their age to sign up for an account is something you really don’t want, as this is already going to cause potential problems. Children who are in their early teens are allowed to use Facebook, however you should watch over them. Regardless of what your children say, you should register an account if you don’t have one already and befriend your kids. This will enable you to see who their friends are, who is posting to their wall and what they are sharing with others, among other things.
Even though we’ve been focusing on ways to protect your kids online, this doesn’t mean that the internet usually represents any grave danger to them. There really is nothing to worry about, providing your children know enough not to give sensitive information to a possible predator, or give them any encouragement. It’s your job as a parent to teach them these things and to watch over them to make sure they’re following these rules.
