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Morwen Oronor Profile
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Registered: 01-2008
Location: South Africa
Posts: 1743
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Internet identitites and exposure to danger


I watched an episode of CSI last night where young girls were being hounded by pedophiles they met in chat rooms.
I have on occasion, purely for research, looked into some of those rooms where you don't have to sign in with a properly tested ID but only need a 'handle' and within seconds, I had 'men' asking very personal, very intimate questions.
And again, signing in with a masculine 'handle' I got the same thing but this time from young girls looking for men.
So the subject that that TV was not far-fetched at all, anyone can find out what I did my googling 'chatroom' and then entering any one of the thousands that come up.
But what really struck me is how there are rooms run by organizations who make money by enticing people to visit them and who employ people to chat to the subscribers. A whole office full of young people who are paid to chat online all day using a provocative name, in this case, Tiffany, to entice older men to, what they imagine, get to know the 'girl' and then meet her.
I wanted to post this as a warning. If you have youngsters in your home who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, do yourself and the child a favor and from time to time, go over their shoulder to read what they are writing and to whom.
Even occasionally get the URL of the site and as a guest, read what is happening on those boards or in those chat rooms. It is your right and duty as a parent to protect your kids. They can't make informed judgments about people when then are teenagers and especially if they spend a lot of time indoors and on computers.
Kids as young as 13 are conned into thinking they are talking to other kids, when in fact they are talking to predators. Places like Second Life and Facebook are full of these people, you may even risk making your kids mad at you by insisting that you look at the profiles of all their 'friends' and making sure that there is nothing unsavory going on.
Are we what we say we are? I think so mostly but you never know and with kids, it's always better to err on the side of caution.
10/28/2008, 11:23 pm Link to this post Send PM to Blog
 
Erika E Profile
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Registered: 10-2003
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Re: Internet identitites and exposure to danger


Erik supports this, and works really hard in doing so too, he speaks at schools and colleges and all kinds of things trying to make the Internet a safe place for kids..
Here

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10/29/2008, 2:26 pm Link to this post  
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Registered: 01-2008
Location: South Africa
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Re: Internet identitites and exposure to danger


The trouble is that kids don't listen.
When people come to their schools to lecture about societal issues, in the same way that adults 'tune out' the minute people start discussing drinking and global warming, they simply sit there thinking about what they will wear to Friday night's party, if they are girls or who they're going to take to Friday night's party, if they are boys.
Lectures like that may cause one or two of the kids to think about what he's saying but when it's over all they want to do is get into the photo op and carry on the discussion they were having before they were told to be quiet. Yes, that kind of thing does have a small effect but the greatest effect is parents being parents and interfering in the child's activities. If your kids have computers, you have to monitor who they are talking to on the computer in the same way that you monitor who they go out with or which parties they go to. It's the same thing.
Luckily I didn't have the problem with mine, they were pre-internet, but when kids visit us here, I allow them to web-surf and I always come into the study to check every now and then to see which sites they are visiting and I chat to them about what they are looking at. So if they are inclined to go to dodgy sites they will know that I'll catch them out and the lecture will be one-on-one.
10/29/2008, 11:42 pm Link to this post Send PM to Blog
 


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