Internet Safety for Kids: Parents Best Efforts Gone Awry?

So, your a concerned parent and want your kids to be safe online. What parent wouldn't? You have security software on your computer and its up to date, you may have added filtering or monitoring software for added protection. Then you discover your child has created several social networking profiles and email addresses from a friends house, the public library or from their school as a work around to your best intentioned efforts. What is a parent to do?

These situations do arise and kids will be kids. Their rebellious behavior can be frustrating at times and can keep a parent on their toes. While this can be irritating it also stresses the need for developing an honest open dialog with your children on the importance of practicing safe online habits. Straightforward and open communication is one of the best ways a parent can get through to a resistant child and sharing stories of real life situations involving other children and problems they encountered while going behind their parents back can really drive your point home. Sharing stories your child can relate to can aid in providing Internet safety for kids.

As an example take a Colorado mother Sharon Hamilton. Sharon recently caught her 15 year old son frantically deleting text messages from his cell phone in an attempt to keep her from viewing them. She grabbed the phone away from her son and saw a message from an out of state phone number she did not recognize. The message read "Good night Babe." After some discussion her son finally admitted to his mom that the message was from a 30 year old female he had met online while playing the video game "World of Warcraft" After Sharon had done further investigating she discovered that her son's female friend was actually an adult male. Her son was as shocked as she was.

Stories like this show the need for open dialog between parents and kids and the ability to form an honest and trusting atmosphere from which you can communicate with each other can help to bridge the gap between parents and their children. As a parent you can spend a little time online and find a multitude of stories like Sharon's that you can share with your kids and help to teach them the importance of Internet safety rules and hopefully curb their need to go behind your back. You never really know who a stranger online could really be and by raising your child's awareness to this fact you can both work as a team and help prevent potentially dangerous encounters.